Can meaningful mathematical conversations be carried out in 140 characters or less?  Find out!  Follow the MAA accounts on Twitter, and search Twitter's public timeline of tweets (those 140-character messages) for hashtags related to MAA and Loci.

(Links: MAA, MathDL, Loci, Twitter)

Tweets posted about Loci content may duplicate what appears on the Loci
RSS feed, but the RSS feed is maintained automatically by the Loci server and
the tweets are written by Twitter users familiar with Loci.

MAA accounts on Twitter:

MAA maintains two account names on Twitter:  maanow and maareviews.  If you have an account on Twitter, you can "follow" these accounts -- then all tweets made from these accounts will appear in your account's home page.  Also, if you send a tweet which includes an account name (other than your own), preceded by "@", this will be listed as a "mention" on the other account's homepage.  The owner of that account may decide to "retweet" your message so that all of their followers can read it.

• @maanow -- Announcements, article links, reviews, and Number of the Day from MAA.
• @maareviews -- Posts eight MAA book reviews per week.

Twitter hashtags for MAA content:

Hashtags are brief categorical metadata tags (i.e. subject keywords, or abbreviations of keywords) used to simplify searching for tweets on a common subject.  To see all public tweets which include a particular hashtag, enter the tag (with the "#" character) in the Twitter search field.  The search field is available for anyone to use on the Twitter home page -- you don't even need an account!  The Twitter service does not organize tweets by hashtag on your Twitter account home page, but some third-party Twitter reading applications might.

• #maaloci -- items related to Loci, including announcements of new articles and resources
• #MathFest -- follow what is happening at the upcoming MathFest in Portland, OR, August 6-8
• #jmm -- comments about the upcoming Joint Math Meetings in San Francisco (January 13-16 2010) will be compiled for the October/November MAA FOCUS.
  (Ambiguity warning:  #jmm is also being used in reference to Java Memory Model.)
• #jointmath -- another hashtag for comments about the Joint Meetings.  Comments with this tag will also appear in the Joint Meetings Wiki.

Note:  #maa is being used as a Twitter hashtag, but not by MAA.

Short URLs:

Long URLs, such as those which refer to Loci articles (typically more than 70 characters long), will be shortened using one of the common free URL-shortening services such as tiny.cc or bit.ly.  The resulting shortened URLs are typically around 20 characters, but have no obvious relationship with MAA or Loci.  For example, http://tiny.cc/DoFdl refers to the Loci Home page.

Direct messages:

If you are following another person's account, and they are also following yours, then the two accounts can exchange "direct messages," which are subject to the same length restrictions as tweets, but are not broadcast to all of your followers.  The MAA accounts generally do not accept direct messages.

The Public Timeline:

Unless you specify otherwise in your Twitter account settings, all of your tweets become part of Twitter's "public timeline," the chronological list of all public tweets.  The tweets which automatically appear on your account home page are only the tweets originating from the accounts you follow, but searches apply to all tweets in the public timeline.  Direct messages do not appear in the public timeline.  All tweets originating from the MAA accounts are public.

Common abbreviations:

Given the very strict limit on the lengths of tweets (140 characters), many abbreviations and otherwise shortened terms have become common in tweets.   Many Twitter users have compiled lists of useful abbreviations -- to find them, Google "Twitter abbreviations."

Editor's Note:

In case you care, Loci Editor Tom Leathrum maintains the Twitter account leathrum.  If you follow that account, Tom promises not to bore you with tweets about when he  ties his shoes in the morning (unless he can connect it with mathematical knot theory).  Leathrum follows both of the MAA accounts listed above, as well as several other accounts, including:

• @scifri -- NPR's Science Friday program, tweets include schedule information (you can send questions to guests live during the program using @-mentions!)
• @sciam -- Scientific American magazine, tweets include article links and updates
• @science -- current events in science from Science News Blog

Leathrum also recommends the following:

• @scienceguide -- current events in science from Science News Guide (volume tends to be high, may crowd out other tweets)
• @mathtourist -- items related to the Mathematical Tourist column on MAA Online (often duplicates tweets on @maanow)