Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Twitter - Thing 27


Twitter is the newest type of internet blog. Now that I know what it is I have heard a few news stories about it. One was about a congressman who was on a top secret trip to Iraq--at least it was top secret until he twittered about it ("Now entering the green zone"). Silly. I read through the mountains of information about twitter before I signed up and I have to admit that the Twitter dictionary was the point where I quit reading. I'm not sure what to think of Twitter--is it like facebook? I don't have any friends on Twitter so I feel like I am reading mini news.
I did enjoy putting on a new background. It was not without difficulty though and I now have a kente cloth background on my computer as a result.
I have to say that I am totally ambivalent about Twitter. I liked the way that the Hibbing Public Library uses Twitter--just as an announcement board--storytime, board meeting etc. The Library of Congress twitter has some actually interesting links to articles (how big is the library of congress?) The MPR uses lots of abbreviations--might have to go back to that dictionary. Al Gore tells me that Antartica is melting and Britney Spears is having a great tour.
I still don't know how to interact with Twitter. Is there a conversation going on somewhere about the posts that I'm not aware of? I did reply to the library of congress saying "Wowee" or something lame.
I think the best use of my library twitter is to post events--Storytime Tuesday at 11:00, or information--get your MN tax forms. Not totally sure what a badge is but I do have a link from my blog to my twitter.

2 comments:

PatriciaP said...

A few of our m-type directors love, love, love Twitter. I am staying open, but am not as wowed as they are. Thats what is great about this program, you get the exposure, some things sort of "stick", others don't, which is fine. Its all good.....

J Wiles Parker said...

It's funny because I'm part of the generation that should absolutely be in love with Twitter and what it does (I'll be 25 this year so I'm somewhere between driven to actually make something of myself and a lazy bum who doesn't want to do anything but sit around all day.) Basically, it's mini updates. Where are you? What are you doing? What's on your mind?
But that's an aspect of facebook I don't even look at that much or even update that much.
It is nice for the reasons you mentioned though. Letting people know what's going on at the library, that things are available. If I could come up with a better way to use it, I'd be all for setting up an account for my library, but I don't know if it's worth it when it's not being used to the full potential.

And really, following people is only fun if you either know them personally or are a fan of them and like to know what project they're working on. That's the only reason I really use mine.