Last night, MCDM launched Beyond the Fail Whale: How Twitter is Changing Organizations, “what may be the first university-level class dedicated to Twitter in the country.”

The class, taught by @kegill,

“explores the impact of Twitter on how organizations communicate (internally and externally) — from facilitating knowledge sharing to bypassing traditional communication gatekeepers, from social network impacts on content creation to new methods of conversational marketing.”

Students will research how Twitter is used in selected industries and compile their reflections in an ebook or print book.

As is the custom at MCDM, students will be using Twitter during class. Follow their tweets in real-time at #uwtwitbook, every Tuesday night from 6-10pm (PDT) through August 11, 2009.

Update: The hashtag for the class has been changed to #uwtwtrbook.

Update, August 17: TwitterBook OpenHouse at University of Washington (CMU126) and on uStream.tv

Students will be giving five minute presentations on the “best of the best” uses of Twitter in their study area—including airlines, hospitals, food banks, politicians, government, Latin America, news media, food service, visual communication, and the military.

Twitter account holders, RSVP at http://twtvite.com/3df62z

Presentations will be shared at http://twitter09.wordpress.com/students/final-presentations/

Note: The uStream link will be added.

If you are a fan of Twitter would you love Flutter?

Flutter is a microblog like Twitter, however Flutter messages are limited to only 26 characters, yes 26!  Currently Twitter allows you to type up to 140 characters per message, which can be very limited sometimes.

However, in a simplifying world 26 characters make more sense.  Now you read more messages from others since their shorter and will take you less time to read them.

What do you Flutter or Twitter?