Things 15 & 16 - Twitter

This week's thing is Twitter.

I signed up, found some people to follow, and even got a follower.

I occasionally use Twitter at work to post Tweets to our followers but had never used it to communicate with people directly, so it was useful to see how that worked. I was also very impressed by the hashtag function, for example #ox23.

I also downloaded Tweetdeck (because I liked the name) and found it to be a lot better interface than Twitter itself.

Seen left to right is the Twitter timeline, replies to me and a feed of #ox23!

Great stuff! I'm sure you can do a lot more with this thing, will investigate further and also try to get Twitter on the Blackberry.

But how does this relate to Libraries? Nuffield's Twitter page is used to provide lists of new books, Library news, Oxford Library news, general Library-related news, information about new resources and details of courses. Looking at some of the other Libraries' pages it looks like they are doing similar things. I guess it's another way of connecting with readers, but will they want to sign up to receive a Library's Tweets?

Update 17/03/10 at the weekend I followed the 6 Nations games on Ubertwitter (on the Blackberry) and Tweetdeck and found it very interesting and fun to read comments in real time.

Obviously this has nothing to do with Libraries, but I'm looking forward to following people's tweets from the Staff Conference tomorrow...