Thing 7 - Tweet Tweet

So 23 Things has made me sign up for Twitter. I started off by finding theUL and Phil Bradley to follow and see what kind of things they tweeted about. I was slightly surprised when I saw that both had immediately started to follow me back after my first tweet. I'm not sure that what I have to say will be of interest to either of them! Twitter is perhaps a victim of its own success - it keeps getting 'stressed' and over capacity and this delayed me in finding other 23 Thingers and Cambridge Librarians to follow and interact with. Perhaps it is just the effect of the World Cup.

Having found the 23 Thingers and had a bit of a play (it seems vaguely wrong to be doing this at work!) with Twitter over the week, I can say that I can now see the point of Twitter. Yes, it helps you to keep up to date by seeing links to blogposts and news items posted by course participants, colleagues and others in the profession. Yes, it creates a nice sense of community as you can share ideas and interact with other librarians. Trainee Mermaid made a good point about Twitter really coming into its own during events- it would be interesting to attend a conference and see how attendees use Twitter during the conference. On the negative side of things though - it could become addictive and time-consuming! Will I carry on using it after the end of 23 Things? Not sure yet, we'll have to see. Even if I do become hooked, I still don't think that I will ever be one of those keen users who tweet ten times a day. It seems vaguely similar to Facebook status updates and even though I've been a Facebook user for 3 years, I don't think I've ever updated my status.

Still haven't quite figured out what this 'trending' thing is all about though...