To tweet or not to tweet...(Thing 7 Cam 23)

Twitter. It seems to be like marmite amongst the Cam23 bloggers - you either love it or you hate it. I resisted joining up to it for a long time for several reasons, which I'll list below. I was mildly curious about it but didn't really feel the need to join up or see the point. But about a month or so ago I decided to join up and see what all the fuss is about and I discovered it can be a really useful tool for keeping up with what's going on in the profession.

Why I didn't join Twitter for aggeees.

I thought it was going to be another Facebook.

I already have a facebook account and for a while joining Twitter to me seemed as if it would be much the same thing. Did I really want to join another site where I'd become mildly addicted to scrolling down a list of people's statuses about the things I don't neccesarily need to know? ("I'm just out the shower and I'm now walking to my car." "Down with the vuvuzelas facebook group - please join!" "I'm in a complicated relationship with XYZ")


But as Library Wanderer points out in her blog post

"If you go onto facebook, the status box asks you the loaded, personal, subjective question: ‘What’s on your mind?’, and the response could feasibly and honestly be anything from itchy nose to the allegory of Plato’s Cave. But Twitter, in a manner vaguely reminiscent of Nessa in Gavin and Stacey, asks you ‘What’s happening?’. The difference is nuanced, and I may be being a bit overly semantic, but it’s still there. Twitter isn’t necessarily about me. Thank goodness!—I had a very boring breakfast this morning." (please follow this link to read in full)


Twitter is really not like Facebook at all. I'm sure it has the potential to be and if I wanted it to be it could be. What I've found is that first and foremost, Twitter has been most useful when keeping up with those "in the know" within the information profession, not just your mates from school. It's also great to keep up with and follow conferences and various events/debates (on the spot as it happens!) that I wouldn't actually have any idea about otherwise.


I didn't get the craze or fully understand why everyone was so obsessed with tweeting. It goes back to the Facebook misconception. It was only through joining Twitter that I realised what it was all about and that's why I'm glad I signed up and actually tried it. I still only tweet here and there but Cam23 seems to have prompted a flurry of communicating with other participants - surely this can only be a good thing.


You can read a great post about the other reasons why Twitter is valuable at Isla's blog here. As Isla so rightly points out, Twitter isn't going to go anywhere anytime soon. Google Replay sounds like it'll be sticking around and you'll be able to virtually time travel and read the first ever tweets created. So be careful what you say! :-)

A few things I've done in order to improve my short Twitter life.

1. A Twitter cull. At first I was a bit mad and followed anyone who looked vaguely interesting. After a while though, I realised it's really not possible to follow a million people and still get something from it, unless you are constantly reading down the list of updates, something which with all the running about I do in my job I can't always manage to do. This also applies to following celebrities... I do have the odd person I find interesting added onto my twitter (who can resist the odd bit of celebrity drivel?) but for me overall, I like to keep my twitter for professional and networky purposes. This is just my personal preference.

2. Explored other ways of using Twitter. For some reason after I came back from my week's holiday, the Twitter interface was driving me mad all of a sudden. I felt like I couldn't follow anything properly. After reading Niamh's post on how to use Twitter without using the Twitter interface, I thought I'd give JournoTwit a try and so far so good. Everything is now organised in columns (my private messages, mentions, news, statuses and retweets) and it's made it so much easier to keep up with what actually is going on!