Texas Aggies are tweeting their traditional greetings – from “whoop” to “gig 'em” – at a rate of thousands of Twitter devotees a day, and the number of followers on the overarching Texas A&M University account, TAMUTalk, is also rapidly increasing.

Current and former students, as well as their parents, are increasingly utilizing Twitter, a free service that lets people keep in touch through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? The “tweets,” or posts on Twitter, are limited to 140 characters.

The recently developed Texas A&M Twitter feed “TAMUTalk” blends university news and conversation. Recent updates include a fresh background design and the insertion of #TAMU hash tags in tweets to ease in searches of university-related content.

With more than 2,400 followers – and growing – TAMUTalk has the second-largest follower base among Texas universities.

Texas A&M’s presence is notable, as it gathered enough followers to warrant front-page placement on Campus Tweet, a college networking directory site that connects students with their university.

Within the Texas A&M umbrella, there are about 55 Twitter feeds ranging from athletics to the student newspaper, colleges, services and organizations.

“Social media is all about conversation,” said Jason Cook, Texas A&M’s vice president for marketing and communications. “We are making a commitment to engage students – prospective, current and former – as well as many of our other audiences where they are and in a way that is timely, relevant and fits the mobile lifestyles of people today.”

The Twitter update is just the latest in the progress of the state’s oldest public university to reach out to current, former and potential students and the public. Texas A&M’s victory in early September, when its university-sponsored Facebook page surpassed the 100,000 “fans” mark, netted the university bragging rights and 100,000 pennies, or $1,000, in scholarship funds. The page still is in first place, with almost 150,000 fans.

Texas A&M was one of the first schools with an iTunes U site and was the first public university to implement a suite of mobile applications, TAMUmobile, which can be downloaded to any iPhone or iPod Touch, as well as to a computer via iTunes at iTunes/Downloads.

The “Events” sub app allows users to browse stories or listings about campus “happenings,” while the “Courses” sub app allows students to search for information about classes and the “Maps” sub app allows users to search for buildings on campus and plot their location on campus using the GPS (global positioning system) on their iPhones. Updates are in progress that will allow access through a BlackBerry or other smart phones.

Some 19 percent of Internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others – up from previous surveys, which showed an 11 percent rate, according to a recent study by Pew Internet. The median age of Twitter users is now 31, which has remained stable over the past year, and Internet users 18 to 44 years old are more likely than older users to use Twitter or another status update service.

Keri Bean (aggieastronaut), a Texas A&M senior who is active in organizations related to her meteorology major and a member of the Texas Aggie Storm Chasers, follows TAMUTalk and has more than 500 followers of her own. “I mostly use Twitter to interact with other people with the same interests,” Bean says. “I've been able to interact with professionals in meteorology and space sciences and I've gotten some neat opportunities, such as touring weather studios and NASA facilities. I've also met several other students at A&M through Twitter who have now become close friends of mine."

Contact: Diane C. McDonald, 979-845-4663 or mcdonaldd@tamu.edu or Kelli Levey, 979-845-4645 or klevey@tamu.edu.

For more news about Texas A&M University, go to http://tamunews.tamu.edu.

Follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/tamutalk.