What is twitter?
Have you ever wondered what your friend or colleague may be doing at a particular instant? Well, the wait is over. You can check their tweets to see what’s going on. What am I talking about? Twitter, of course!
Twitter is a messaging tool that allows you to communicate your activities with others by publishing brief messages of 140 characters or less. Twitter is like a diary, journal, or mini blog that lets you share what you are doing, with the world. People follow you, you follow people, and all of a sudden, you have developed a network of friends, and the whole twitter universe gets along.
Twitter Uses
Twitter is much more than just following someone’s daily activities. Twitter uses include updating news or announcements on a website, alerting services, posting answers to frequently asked questions, announcing new books, and live conference blogging. You can find news alerts, universities, women’s health medical news, talk show hosts, floor updates from the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, presidential candidates (http://twitter.com/JohnMcCain and http://twitter.com/BarackObama), and more.
Still confused? Check out this video from the team at Common Craft. They do an excellent job of making complicated topics easy to understand. It takes a while for this file to download. You might want to turn the volume down or off until the entire video is downloaded. Then crank the sound back up and watch the video.
Using Twitter
It’s easy. Sign up for a free account at http://twitter.com/. Select Get Started-Join! and you are on your way to tweeting. Your username will be visible to users. So unless you want everyone to know who you really are, use an alias. Once you have an account, share your information or send an invitation to your family, friends, and colleagues. There is even a space that lets you see who is getting updates of a particular account, if they have provided a picture or avatar in their profile. When using Twitter, you are not limited to using an internet-connected computer. You can also access Twitter on your cell phone, via RSS feed, instant messaging, email, or by using a desktop client.
Expanding Twitter
A number of applications are available for expanding the capabilities of Twitter. TwitterMail allows you to send and receive updates using your email account and TwitterVision displays a person’s geographical location via Google maps, as they post messages.
Readings
7 Things You Should Know About . . . Twitter. (2008, July). Retrieved September 4, 2008, from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7027.pdf.
Newbie’s Guide to Twitter. Retrieved September 4, 2008, from http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9697867-2.html.
Cohen, S. (2008, June). Top Tools for the Twittersphere. Information Today, 25(6), 16-17. Retrieved September 4, 2008, from Academic Search Premier database.
Kroski, E. (2008, July). All a Twitter. School Library Journal, 54(7), 31-35. Retrieved July 1, 2008, from Academic Search Premier database.
Examples
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Undergraduate Library
The alerts are also posted on their website via RSS feed. See http://www.library.uiuc.edu/ugl/.
Pennsylvania State University Live
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Yale University Science Libraries
Activity #1
Go to Twitter.com and search for “Monticello, AR” or anything that interests you. Create a blog post to share what you discovered.
Sign up for a free account. Remember, your username will be visible to users. So consider using your blog name or another alias as your username. Throughout your day, create tweets to update your friends, colleagues, or family on your activities. Post a link to your twitter account on your blog, so the participants can keep up with what you’re doing.
Activity #2
Do you think Twitter is fascinating or a complete waste of time? How would implementing Twitter improve library services? What are some additional ways in which Twitter might be useful? Create a post to share your thoughts on your blog.
