I’ve been twittering since February 16th. That’s 6 months and just under a week of twittering with over 310 messages (or tweets, using Twitter lingo). I send an average of 2 tweets a day, with exponential growth (meaning that when I got started I didn’t do it much since I had no idea what the heck to do, but now that I have the hang of it I tweet a lot).
So what does it mean that I’ve learned how to use Twitter? Mostly I use it for the following reasons:
- To communicate directly with friends using the @ sign followed by their usernames
- To monitor the ebb and flow of library culture during the day
- To be reminded of issues I care about
- To ask a professional brain trust for advice
I think that last point is really important. See image below:
Once I got into Twitter I added a bunch of librarians to my friends list. I can see when folks get a stumper reference question or when there is a technical issue (like Blogger going down earlier today). I can also ask questions and get a response from other users, such as the portal question I asked above. Beyond all other silly, frivolous, and fun purposes, this is what keeps me in the Twitter community.
Early on, as any good librarian 2.0 would do, I tried to think about how to use Twitter for the library. I saw a few examples and watched to see what would happen. I’m still making up my mind about the potential usefulness of this. However, tonight I found two different things on Twitter that make me think that now might be the time to create a library Twitter account. One is that it appears that one of my friends teaching an Instructional Design class either required or suggested or mentioned Twitter to the class, because a bunch of people that I know in that class just signed up tonight. It’ll be fun to see potential class uses as the semester goes on! Another is that I used the people search feature and found that university dining at mpow is using Twitter to push out announcements. How forward thinking and cool! So, I’m thinking if dining is going to do some Twitter advertising and education at mpow, perhaps the library should get in on this too. If nothing else, it’s an easy to generate RSS news feed. I’ll keep you posted if we do anything interesting!
So, anyway, if you’re on Twitter shoot me a direct message and friend me, I’d love to add you to my brain trust! 
Update: And here’s the flier WFU Dining was giving out at freshmen information day!
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