Twitter

As you can see, I am now in the “real-time information network” sphere. I have tweeted, retweeted, deleted and replied to tweets, used hashtags, and finally learned a whole new language in the process!

It’s kind of interesting to read what people are saying about particular topics; this can easily be done from the homepage without having to sign in. I decided to follow a couple of Oxford libraries on Twitter and, thanks to the services provide by TweepML and wefollow, I am also following a few librarians whose interests in particular areas of Librarianship appear to be very similar to mine. Unfortunately no one is following me yet which has prevented me from sending a direct message as you can only do that to one of your followers.

There is no doubt that Twitter has become very popular and I can understand how it has been regarded as a powerful tool for libraries to use in order to promote their services and strengthen relationships with their readers. However, since it appears that such a great amount of worthless information is tweeted, I wonder whether Twitter's reputation as an effective library tool is being damaged and the situation is aggravated by the fact that there are more reliable online means to address the same purposes available.