Teach someone you love to micro-blog

Global Voices is having a Valentine's day blog drive (is that the correct the terminology ?) where bloggers teach loved ones how to blog, or micro-blog


After getting rejected several times at work on my offer to teach how to micro-blog (No, I swear it was not a pick=up line), I turned to family for comfort and as a last resort. I was going to teach my 4-legged roommates but they already have a blog.

My mum is a busy person. When on the phone, if it takes more than 2 minutes, she will often tell you to speed up because she is in between commitments.
However, unlike the other members of my family, she is a true believer in the power of communicating tools and network.

So twitter's less than 140 characters policy is a perfect match for her. Additionally, bandwidth is still at a premium in Addis Ababa and she is often on the go so micro-blogging is definitely the way to go.

We went with twitter. We considered the other options but since she is far from a geek and she will use twitter to collect quick information and find people in her line of work, we figure the most utilized one would work best.

Setting up her account over the phone was easy, the challenge was to find a password strong enough yet easy to remember(she often calls me to retrieve her login passwords). One line bio: check. Photo: check. SMS updates: nope, not from here.
background: still deciding between Mesquel Square or Rova.




Okay, now the fun part.
Who to follow and how to find them ?

Well she wanted fresh news from Madagascar, especially now so I had to direct her towards the limited although growing group of twitterers based in Madagascar.
Joan collected all Foko bloggers on twitter here so that's probably a good place to start.
@ariniana, @as2coeur,@dadandry, @layshiyuu01 , @r1lita (& more to come).

Then you want to add all the micro-bloggers on site who provided instant news during the crisis (in alphabetical order):
@barijaona, @DotMG, @DanielAustin, @harinjaka, @foko @pmalgachie, @saveoursmile, @tandriamirado, @thierry_ratsiz ( Not the full list of twitterers in Madagascar)

Now, we just need to remember the password, choose a practical twitter manager, synchronize with facebook and and we are good to go. Oh I forgot, one also need to tweet more than once a year !

I should have skipped the latest sarcasm because my mum decided not to follow such an ingrate, mocking son.

Happy Valentine's day everyone. And remember, don't mock your mum's computer skills

PS: shameless plug: 4 legged-roommates also now on twitter.
They are not following me either.