Twitter

[Wendy Cornelisen]

This week's expert is Jodie, who knows tons about Twitter! Post your questions, and your ideas about how libraries can use Twitter, here.

[Margaret Brown]

I'm really hoping to learn what the appeal of this thing is. I'm ready to be persuaded, but I'm not there yet. Convince me. Okay, I'll join it, and play some.

[Margaret Brown]

So I joined Twitter. I was going to follow Jodie, but can't find her. Oh, well. Why is this better than Facebook? Or is it? I don't have any intention of using it from my phone, and I feel like that's what it's really for. I could send a tweet to Facebook, I think, but why not just put it there in the first place?

[Jodie]

I don't necessarily think it's better - it's a different, more streamlined way of communicating. One difference in the two is Twitter is more for finding new people with your interests than Facebook is, which focuses more on connecting with folks you already know.

You don't have to tweet from your phone...I rarely do. I do send my tweets to Facebook using the Selective Twitter Status app on Facebook just so I don't have to update both all the time. Not all my tweets go to Facebook, though (you can put a #fb hashtag on the tweets you want to go to Facebook, which is nice).

Why not just put it on FB in the first place? For me, Twitter is a different audience, one that I don't necessarily reach on Facebook. My Facebook profile is locked down to friends only (since I have a lot of personal info there), but my Twitter is wide open (but I don't post personally identifying things there).

[Christi U.]

I had trouble finding Jodie too, but I think that's because she's decided to be a bit more private there and only use her first name. You can find under the user name: "grouchyladybug", though.

[Teresa Threet]

Don't laugh, but I joined Twitter to follow Michael Johns when I was waiting for his album to debut. I've written a couple of thoughts since then, but I really don't know what I'm doing! I'm ready to learn! I need to take more time to discover what "following" really means and how to do it.

[Jodie]

This is one of the many great uses of Twitter - keeping up with your favorite celebs! :) I follow several, including @SuzeOrmanShow and several Titans football players. And of course @StephenColbert!

Following means that person's updates are shown to you on your Twitter homepage. When you follow someone, it doesn't necessarily mean they are following you back - the 'relationship' can be one-sided, unlike Facebook and Ning, where the relationship is automatically mutual. Really popular Twitter people often only follow a few folks, while they have hundreds of thousands of followers - see @Oprah as an example.

[Michelle Nielsen Ott]

I am so happy to see Stephen Colbert tweeting again. He has been tweet-less for so long.

[Anna Reed Galyon]

Thanks for the tip, y'all! I am now following Stephen Colbert! :)

[Becky Smeltzer]

I've been using twitter for a while, primarily to get event updates in my geographic area.

I updated my twitter page background using twitterbackgrounds. It was easy!

On my iGoogle page, I use BeTwittered.

[Jodie]

Cool, thx for these suggestions! I'll have to check them out. I think I've used BeTwittered before...

[Melissa Reynolds]

Thanks for the info on twitterbackgrounds! I happily now have a STL Cardinals background!

[Christi U.]

Oh fun! Now I have a street scene, which is exactly how I'm feeling about L&D. It's constantly on the Go! ... And I tweeted about my new background.