How to Use Twitter for Autism Social Networking

Are you using Twitter?  How are you using it?  I’ve met a lot of people in the autism/Aspergers world through Twitter and think it’s an excellent way to meet people and interact with other people.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Sign up

Create an account on Twitter.  When you create your profile, think about who you want to interact with.  If you want to meet other people on the spectrum, it’s helpful to indicate that.  If you have Aspergers, simply putting “aspie” somewhere in your bio is sufficient and doesn’t announce to the whole world what it is.  Many parents mention in their bio that they are parenting a child on the spectrum.

About privacy: A few people choose the “protect my updates” option.  You should know that your tweets are eventually Googleable.  If you tweet about personal matters, either don’t attach your full name to your account or protect your updates.  It’s far easier not to use your full name, as many people won’t follow someone with a protected account.

2. Install Tweetdeck

You can technically access Twitter through their web interface, but Tweetdeck gives you more functionality from one screen.  It lets you filter your friends into groups so you can see all of your personal friends’ tweets together, your autism friends, etc.  You can make a column just for a specific search, too.

3. Start following some people

My twitter name is @aspieteach.  If you go to my list of friends, you’ll find a long list of other people you might want to follow too.  There are adults on the spectrum, parents of kids on the spectrum, and other related tweeps.  Looking at a person’s list of friends and followers is a good way to find new people to follow.  Another way is #followfriday, which is where people make suggestions on Friday.

4. Create search column in TweetDeck

If you’re using TweetDeck, you can create a search column for a specific topic, like “autism” or “aspergers”.  You could also just do a search on the Twitter site, but in TweetDeck the search stays open and updated until you close the app.  This is another good way to meet people and how I found my first few autism-related followers.  I still do this once in a while to find out what other people are saying.

5. Say hello!

Don’t be afraid to jump in and say hi!  People are pretty nice.

(edited 7/15/10): I made some helpful comments about this at ASA that I’ll be adding here!