Before this class, I had never even considered using Twitter. I was under the same impression as most of the uninitiated: that I would receive endless updates about the minute details of people's lives. I've never been one to follow celebrities, and the constant status-updaters on Facebook always kind of drove me crazy. All in all, Twitter seemed like more of an annoyance than a useful social networking tool.
Now that I've tried it, it is still far from my favorite social network application. But it's not as bad as I thought it would be. First of all, I don't have to subscribe to all the posts about "what am I going to wear today?" or "Coco Puffs for breakfast!"--thank goodness. It was also a nice way to communicate with my classmates and to share links. As far as real-time goes, it's somewhere between instant messaging and blogging. Sort of like texting on a large scale. It's nice to get updates from sources I'm interested in as well.
But as far as the updates go, I would rather subscribe via RSS than get a tiny, 140 character tweet. And as for communication, frankly I found the organization of the site a bit too confusing to use daily. No folders to organize your twitter friends...it had a list function that worked ok, but not great. I suppose that's what all the aggregating programs and such are for, but I don't really think it's worth the extra trouble. I was already getting lost in my slosh of "followed" tweeters, and I can't imagine trying to sift through many more. And many of the tweeters we subscribed to post several times a day. To be honest, I don't know that I want that level of communication with strangers (not counting my classmates as strangers of course!).
But like so many of our readings say, libraries should go where their patrons are. And if patrons are on twitter, that's where libraries should be too. Despite my personal feelings about the medium, I realize that it could potentially be a powerful, low-cost marketing tool for libraries. Just because I think it's annoying doesn't mean it can't be useful too!
It definitely can be a low cost tool for marketing, but it would have to be aggressive marketing. Live stream relies on conversation and instant gratification. Merging into people's hashtags and developing conversations around your library could be great ways to get the ball rolling.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything you wrote, and those are my feelings as well. As far as tweeting in a libary setting, you can post regular tweets about upcoming programs in your library, links to blog posts with reading suggestions (for different age levels), and get 140 character feedback from patrons about what works and does not work in your library.
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