Twitter on

Hi,
I wonder out there how many are making use of this application and demonstrating to colleagues how it may be used?

Personally, with staff who are new to the social web, I am hanging back from highlighting this resource - I think I have enough on my hands in getting across the concept of blogs, wikis and social bookmarking. I can just imagine the responses from some when shown a resource that ostensibly is for people to churn out fountains of stuff - what I am doing, what I've just eaten, how I'm feeling etc.

I spotted that the BBC are now Twittering - so others may follow

In fact I could do with some convincing myself as to the library / info sharing benefits of Twitter - any Twitter fans out there?

Tags: BBC, Twitter

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Permalink Reply by Jill on July 24, 2007 at 11:01am
I can't address its use in the library itself, but I do use Twitter as a tool for short communication with contacts outside of MPOW. It streams short blurts (140 characters) which works well for some types of messages. I haven't had it go down except for periods of worldwide heavy use (such as Harry Potter madness this past Saturday morning). Not for in-depth communication, it works for purposes of asynchronous communication. I'm on twitter as jillmwo if you'd care to try it out.
Permalink Reply by Andy Kirk on July 24, 2007 at 11:36am
Thanks Jill,

Twitters with links I can deal with but I just can't seem to get my head around the 'lists of stuff I've been doing' concept. I'll keep watching.

Andy
Permalink Reply by Jill on July 24, 2007 at 1:34pm
Right now, I think I find Twitter most useful for keeping in contact with a friend on the West Coast; our timetables are totally uncoordinated so w/o Twitter, we'd either be emailing one another back and forth or waiting for one of us to blog an entry (the other one doesn't blog). With Twitter running in the background of our day, I know when she's had a successful birthday party for her spouse and she knows my frustration in waiting all day for Harry Potter to be delivered. It works *really* well at keeping an ear out for what's going on in the lives of others. I can even say that it works well if you want to keep a particular group of people aware when you've updated a blog or something of that ilk.

Twitter was conceived because blogging has been given over to lengthy entries as opposed to simply a way of transmitting a nifty link you've encountered. It's really intended just for quick communiques.

One final thing I just recalled that it is useful for -- transmission of travel updates. Twitter works well if you are stuck in an airport and need to let someone know where you are. Very efficient for that type of need. If you are tracking a speaker's progress across continents, Twitter is very useful.
Permalink Reply by Andy Kirk on July 24, 2007 at 5:42pm
Jill, MC

thanks for the responses. Gleaned some good ideas of how it can be used and seems to be a surprising amount of people who do Twitter

I am trying to gather some useful examples of its application, so travel updates, kind of IM-ing, Blog alerts, news alerts - in various BBC sections all help to put this in some practical context. Perhaps too many people are currently using it to document what they have just had for lunch, which website they are looking at etc. I wonder if people are too ready to commit absolutely anything to the internet making it a giant brain dump? Suppose I should try to detatch Twitter from the concept of a Blog.
Permalink Reply by Steve Cisler on July 24, 2007 at 6:43pm
You might try David Troy's twittervision.com and the more interesting flickrvision.com to see the amount of activity.
Permalink Reply by Andy Kirk on July 25, 2007 at 4:37am
the term 'micro blog' seems apt. I must say I'm fascinated by the Twittervision and Flickrvision links you posted Steve. It is quite hypnotic watching the posts and images come in!
Permalink Reply by Anna M. Nelson on July 25, 2007 at 9:39am
I actually just saw Twitter for the first time yesterday. It was amusing to read, but it was just another twist on the blog. Basically it is just a watered down version - you put in a sentence on what you are doing at a given moment. It seems to me that this is a result of the lack of attention span in today's world, and the need for instant gratification. But like I said, it was amusing, but only if you know the person. Reading someone's Twitter log without any prior knowledge of the person would be like reading an instruction manual...boring.
Permalink Reply by Lorrie Ann Butler on August 3, 2007 at 3:42pm
Used it today to find out where Stephen Abram is this week (vacation). Our "staff day" committee hadn't heard back from their email and calls to him. :-)
Permalink Reply by holli buchter on August 5, 2007 at 11:03am
I have used twitter for personal uses, but not for business-yet. I am developing a blog to hopefully replace my website that I am sure no one checks on a regular basis and plan to have twitter there to let staff know where I am. I am out of the office a fair amount and want to experiment with this use. Personally I think it is loads of fun.

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