I love Twitter, although I am by no means a prolific user compared to those who have somehow found the time to post 10,000+ tweets! I am not new to the social networking site, having set up an account a couple of years ago. However having only tweeted around 600 times, I feel like I have probably not experienced the best that Twitter has to offer. I think that Twitter is a site that undoubtedly gets better the more you use it. Although you can just follow people and never tweet yourself, this lack of engagement can make it a very one-sided experience.
Following the #UoS23 things feed has renewed my interest a bit, since before this I hadn't tweeted since Christmas and had no inclination to either. Much of this is due to a reluctance to fill my feed with boring facts about routine activities (still better suited to Facebook I think!), although I have mainly used Twitter for promotion purposes, firstly when I was doing my PhD, using it as opportunity to connect with fellow PhD students and academics, and more recently to promote a store I have on Etsy. For these purposes, Twitter is brilliant. I think if Twitter is used predominantly for networking and following people with similar interests then it can be a very valuable tool. On the other, less serious side, Twitter can provide pure escapism and there are plenty of people out there worth following just for laughs.
Back to #Sot23, I did enjoy the #filmlist activity, as any opportunity to talk about films is most welcome, although after this initial discussion things seemed to go quite flat on the feed. I am hoping though that conversations between colleagues I have followed and who have followed me back will continue and don't simply end after 23 things is over.....
On a related note, I wonder if the library should promote their Twitter feed more as the number of followers is significantly lower than for the Facebook page. I have noticed this number going up more lately, but I suppose in terms of considering target audiences, students will tend to flock to Facebook first. The trick to gaining more followers on Twitter is of course to follow more people - and Tweet very regularly! Something to bear in mind perhaps???
Nice post and cool blog BTW! Like you I have been on Twitter for a while. I find Twitter useful for keeping up to date with emerging tech news, conferences and the like, but don't really tweet much (occasional retweets etc). I thought the #filmlist activity was a great idea and inspired people to tweet but I agree that the tweeting slowed and subsided after a day or two, which was a shame. Interestingly quite a few people said their experience of Twitter was information overload. I guess I can see their point of view. In fairness I probably ignore more than half of the tweets in my feed so maybe part of using Twitter (perhaps any 2.0 tech) can involve changing the way you interact with information, particularly if you are new to it.
ReplyDeleteNice post and good comment from Matt :-) I agree with both of you in many points you made. I also use Twitter as a powerful current awareness tool to keep me up to date with the issues that I'm interested in...
DeleteYes, I find it interesting that so many have commented on Twitter being information overload - I don't think I see it that way, although perhaps when I first started getting to grips with it I found it quite overwhelming. Like you Matt I tend to ignore quite a few tweets, and occasionally this leads me to unfollow people when I realise that what they have to say is actually of little interest to me! Quite a brutal approach but when you are following a lot of people then you might miss useful tweets if you are following too many. As Mina says though, as a current awareness tool it is very powerful and I will definitely continue to use it.....
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