Twitter (Thing 6)

Good morning, friends! I'm glad you stopped by. Since I suspect its popularity is growing among university students, I decided to explore Twitter.

Thing 6: Twitter

Beyond Facebook, one other popular social media site used by some University Libraries is Twitter. I wanted to gain some knowledge about Twitter because among Top 15 Social Networking Websites, I noticed that Twitter was often used by University libraries.

Created by Jack Dorsey and launched in July 2006, Twitter is a competitor to Facebook in that it also markets itself as a social networking site. One main difference between the two is that Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters.  They must be text based and are referred to as "Tweets". It has slightly more than half of Facebook's users, claiming 500 million active users earlier this year. 

One interesting point of note about Twitter is its syntax. There is a pseudo syntax employed by users of the site. The most interesting elements of this in-site syntax are that the @ symbol is used to indicate that a tweet is directed at or about some other specific user. The # symbol is used to indicate that a tweet is aimed at a number of users. The # is also used in tweets to indicate that the tweet is about some particular subject or interest. For example, #youknowyourefrommiamiwhen would indicate a tweet was about growing up in Miami or living in Miami.  Twitter as a site has adapted itself to maximize the use of these syntactical conventions. That is, Twitter didn't invent these conventions, but added functionality to make it more useful (like emailing users when someone @-mentions them).

USF Tampa's library has a Twitter presence at @USFlibraries. Its posts on the site occur with even less frequency than do posts on the library's Facebook page. Prior to the tweet posted 14 hours ago, the most recent tweet was dated June 25th.

Before offering some thoughts about whether University libraries should use Twitter, I feel like I should warn you: I am not a fan of Twitter for personal use.  Although I do have an account, I seldom use it because I find tweets to be derivative of Facebook's "Status Updates" so I never fully embraced Twitter myself.  

That being said, I think as smart phones grow more popular with college aged students it might be a good idea for University libraries to use.  It seems the site could offer information to students in an instant because of its limitations on content in tweets.  

~J