Thing #19

Ok, I picked Twitter. I've been thinking about this Web 2.0 tool for awhile, wondering what all the buzz was about. I set up my account and found some people I knew to start following. Some tweets immediately popped up with posts from these friends and they were interesting. It gave me some ideas of what I can tweet about.

Twitter is special because it allows people to follow other people and find out what they are doing now with very few words. There is a 140 word limit with any post and I can see where they wouldn't all be used on a regular basis.

As I said before, Twitter has had me pondering about it for awhile. This morning I got on Gale and searched for recent articles in LMC and SLJ about Twitter, wondering how it is used in libraries. (I've begun to secretly want an iPhone but I figure I need a reason to have one. Could Twitter be a reason?) The articles I found were interesting and gave me lots of ideas. I think the idea of putting out really quick book talks is neat and could really work for my customers -- MS students! I think it could also be useful for really quick announcements like "Book fair opens at 7am today! See you then!" I think that Twitter is great for reaching my population! I also think it would be fun for my personal life, family and friends and all. I guess I would need two user names or accounts -- one for the librarian and one for the regular person.

I found some big name library people to follow like Doug Johnson and Joyce Valenza. There tweets came to my homepage as soon as I added them to the list of people I am following. Joyce Valenza puts links to other blogs that have something interesting. It can be used as a way to promote blogs and share ideas that are out there right now.

I am a loyal NPR listener and a few times now I've heard reports about Twiku and other forms of poetry via Twitter. That sounds fun and like a great idea for English teachers to use with students.