I think for anyone reading this blog, you probably know I’m an avid supporter of the microblogging platform Twitter, but there have been some interesting points made recently about tweeting during events, and it’s something I’d like to discuss (particularly apt at the moment as I’m “Twitter Officer” for the upcoming New Professionals Conference in July!).

The focus for this post is on tweeting at events, not tweeting in general. My own experiences have taught me that sometimes it is acceptable (and encouraged) to tweet during an event, and sometimes it’s frowned upon. I’d also like to make it clear that of course it is unacceptable to tweet about confidential matters and therefore inappropriate to tweet internal meetings to an external audience, or to tweet any information which is sensitive or confidential.

More recently I’ve been discussing the issue of whether or not to tweet at events with my boyfriend Chris (yes we are proper nerds and spend a lot of our free time discussing such things!). It seems it’s quite a complex issue with a number of misunderstandings, as unfortunately experienced by WoodsieGirl recently. There’s been an interesting debate over on CILIP Communities today which I’ve been following with interest, and I thought I’d share my own views and some of the arguments for and against tweeting at events. I hope to present a balanced view, although I do admit up front that I personally sit firmly in the camp who advocate tweeting at events, for the moment anyway.

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Just a brief post to highlight a new(ish) feature on WordPress.com blogs which you can use to link your blog posts to your Twitter account.

I talked about the importance of linking your online accounts at my talks at the New Professional’s Conference and the CILIP Open Graduate Day earlier this year, and at the time recommended using Twitterfeed to help you link your blog posts into Twitter. This is still a great service and works well with all RSS feeds, but if you just want to link your WordPress.com blog(s) to your Twitter account(s), you can now do it directly from your WordPress dashboard.

I was going to run through the process of doing this, but I found a great page on the WordPress support pages which includes screenshots for each stage, so rather than re-invent the wheel, here’s the link.

I’ve tested it out on one of my work blogs with our Twitter account and it works really well – you can edit the Twitter post from within the dashboard on your new post (in the Publish box on the right sidebar) and it posts almost immediately to your Twitter account after publishing the blog post. You can also use it with blogs with multiple authors and have just their authored posts going to their individual Twitter account which could be great for shared blogs.

Thought it was worth a blog post anyway, as it’s a somewhat hidden feature (well, I didn’t know how advanced it was anyway so thought others might not either!). At the moment this feature is just on WordPress.com blogs, but the developers have said they are working on a plugin to achieve the same thing on WordPress.org (self-hosted) blogs too.

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A few weeks ago there were some major changes with the layout of Facebook (more on the official Facebook blog). The change has been pretty unpopular with quite a lot of people, although I have to say I personally quite like the change of focus. Facebook is now far more focused on following the activities of your friends on your home page, in a similar way to Twitter (Facebook did try to buy Twitter earlier this year so it’s probably no coincidence that they are changing in this way).

At around the same time of the change, Facebook also changed its Facebook Pages, the section of Facebook for businesses and organisations, and rebranded it as Facebook Public Profiles. There’ve been a fair few teething problems including broken pages on IE for any page with opening hours included – thankfully others have been quick to raise the issues and share fixes (particular thanks to Edith Speller, @wiilassie on Twitter). Most of the issues seem to have been sorted now )or a fix found at least!).

The changes bring organisation pages more inline with personal pages, there has also been a change of focus for organisations – instead of the information page being the main feature of the page, the Wall is the default landing page (although this can be changed in Settings if you wish).

Facebook Public Profile layout

One of the main differences is that organisations can now update their status in a similar way to personal Facebook profiles. This means that fans can (if they agree to) view short updates on their homepage from public profiles they are interested in. If enabled, they can also see any new content which has been added (e.g. if a new photo album is added it should show up in their Public Profile feed).

Although this means that the page I administer for our Learning Centres needs work (previously it was a fairly static page), I view the change as a positive step. I’m currently awaiting feedback from management on where to go next with the Facebook project but ideally I’d love to see it being used in a more dynamic way. We have a lot happening in our Learning Centres and I’d like to use Facebook as a way to connect with our users and keep them up-to-date with developments (e.g. events, new databases, vacation opening hours etc.).

I’m pleased Facebook have made this change, it’s a challenge now for us to ensure that our presence on Facebook is worthwhile and although it still won’t require much time to update (it only takes seconds to change the status), I’m hoping it will remind me (and other admins) of the importance of keeping the content fresh. If I get approval, I’d like to ensure we have more fresh information on our page such as photographs, service/resource updates, possibly even discussions about any issues users have. Anyone else have any ideas of how to make the most of the new Public Profile on Facebook?

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Following on from my previous post about finding people to follow on Twitter, I recently found out about WeFollow, another Twitter directory, thanks to Phil Bradley.

The homepage has the top categories (those with most followers) and lists the top five tweeters/twitterers (not sure what the term would be!) in each category. You can click on the topics on the right hand side of the homepage to find people in different categories, and you can use the search box to find categories which aren’t featured on the front page. You can see a list of librarians currently on WeFollow which ranks them according to the number of followers they have; I’m currently #12.

To add yourself to the directory, just send a Tweet to @wefollow and include up to three areas you would like to be added to. For example, I sent the following message:

@followme #librarian #web2 #university

That’s the basics, although Phil explains WeFollow in more detail in his blog post so rather than repeat it, here’s the link to his post.

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This is the third of a series of posts about the iPhone/iPod Touch.

As Twitter has received so much publicity recently, I thought it may be useful to write about Twitter applications you can use on your iPhone/iPod Touch. For anyone who isn’t sure what Twitter is, you may find my earlier posts on Twitter – what is it and how can it be used? and Finding people to follow on Twitter useful as an introduction. Please feel free to follow me, I am joeyanne on Twitter.

iPhone/iPod Touch applications for Twitter

Twitter applications are probably of most use to iPhone users as you can “tweet” to your hearts content wherever you are, whereas iPod Touch owners need to be within range of a wireless network to use the applications.

I’ve tried a few iPhone applications for use with Twitter, but the one I use most is Tweetie. Tweetie displays tweets in a similar way to the iPhone’s SMS interface as you can see in the screenshot below:

Tweetie screenshot

I have to admit I do really like the interface of Tweetie and it’s one thing that keeps me going back to Tweetie in favour of other applications. Another thing I really like about Tweetie is the ease with which you can link through to view people’s profiles and can add people to follow from the iPhone interface.

Favouriting or replying to a tweet is also easy – you just swipe across the tweet and the following options appear:

Tweetie options (reply, view profile, favourite)

Tapping once on the tweet gives further options such as retweeting, posting a link to a tweet, mailing a link to a tweet and deleting your own tweets (I’m still hoping for the addition to edit tweets in future updates to Twitter!). You can also search Twitter from the Tweetie application, find people to follow and see the current trends.

Tweetie is currently £1.79 in the App Store, and I think it is worth it – it’s certianly my preferred Twitter app for my iPod at the moment.

Another good application for the iPhone/iPod Touch which is great feature wise is Twitterfon. Twitterfon is a free application and does everything that Tweetie does, it’s also quite easy to use, just not quite so pretty in my opinion.

I also tried the free version of Twitteriffic but I have to confess I didn’t like it much, the controls weren’t as intuitive as Tweetie or Twitterfon and the screen was too dark (there may be a setting to change this but I didn’t keep it long enough to find out).

There may well be other Twitter application for the iPhone/iPod Touch which are as good as if not better, do you have any recommendations (or reasons I should give Twitterfon/Twitteriffic another go)?

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I’ve had a few people who are new to Twitter recently ask me how to find people to follow, so thought it would be useful to share my experiences and also share a new resource I found this morning.

Most of the people I currently follow are either people I already knew were using Twitter (usually via mentioning it on their blog), or people I have found through them. When I first joined Twitter, I used other librarian’s lists to see who they were following. The likelihood is that I might also find some of the people they are following of interest. It’s amazing how quickly you can build up more contacts this way; each new person you follow leads you to a whole new group of potential twitterers to follow. Some of these people I had already heard of but didn’t realise they were on Twitter, others were people I didn’t know but found their updates interesting. I don’t tend to add anyone who has protected their updates unless I know who they are, purely because if I can’t see their updates I don’t know if they are relevant to me.

Since I established a core list of people to follow, I haven’t actively looked for others but if they have added me and I find their updates interesting I have tended to also follow them. I don’t want my Twitter list to become unmanageable so I don’t want to follow too many people and don’t check it often enough to follow those who post very regularly, otherwise I’d get completely swamped in unread tweets.

If you have no idea where to start when finding people to follow, you may find Just Tweet It a useful resource (found thanks to David Rothman)

Just Tweet It screenshot

Just Tweet It is a directory of twitter users categorised into different areas, one of which is librarians. I’ve added myself to the Twittering Librarians directory, and I’ll have to take a look a some on the list that I’m not currently following. There are plenty of other categories so you’re sure to be able to find people to follow from there. I’ll definitely be recommending this resource to anyone new to Twitter looking for people to follow to start them off. It may also be useful to add youself to the directory so that others can find you.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a category for twittering libraries (although there are some listed in the librarians directory), but there is a Museums directory.

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I’ve been a Twitter user (joeyanne) on and off for a few months now, but have only recently started to use it regularly. It seems to have suddenly become more popular; Stephen Fry talked about it on last week’s Jonathan Ross show, and there’s a video of him talking about twitter on the BBC site which is currently the most viewed video on there.

I’ve personally noticed an increase in use of Twitter recently due to the number of followers I seem to be getting – I don’t have loads but most days in the last couple of weeks I seem to be getting at least one e-mail notifying me of another follower. There’s also interest on the lis-bloggers listserv, this afternoon there have been a number of posts discussing its use within libraries.

Seeing as I haven’t yet written a blog post about Twitter, I thought now might be a useful time to write my thoughts about Twitter as well as explain what it is to those who may not be familiar with it.

What is Twitter?

For anyone who is new to Twitter (there seems to be a lot of people at the moment who are trying to find out more about it and struggling), there’s a useful CommonCraft video called Twitter in Plain English.

If you just want to know the basics I thought it might be useful to outline them here (quite a few of my colleagues have asked me and I found it difficult to explain so this will be a useful exercise for me too!):

• Twitter is “micro-blogging” which is basically a short form of blogging (up to 140 characters per message)
• The main idea of Twitter is to update your current status, the website uses the question “What are you doing?” – this could be things like having breakfast, watching TV, on the way to work etc., or informational posts like sharing interesting links
• A twitter message is called a “tweet”
• You choose to follow other users of Twitter which means that when you go to your Twitter page (be it on the Twitter website, or using one of the many Twitter tools – more on this later) you will see updates from these people
• Other people choose to follow you which means they will see your updates in their own feed
• You can reply publicly to people you are following (this is what it means when you see @ in front of someone’s username e.g. if someone publicly replied to one of my messages it would say @joeyanne and then their message) – this helps other people follow the thread of the conversation
• You can also send direct messages which only the recipient would see
• RT before a message means a re-tweet – sharing a post that someone else has already tweeted

How can I get started with Twitter?

If you want to have a go of microblogging yourself, here’s how I would suggest going about it:

1. Get yourself a twitter account
2. Set up your profile with some basic details and personalise your page (you can follow this tutorial to make a customised screen in PowerPoint but to be honest it’s not really necessary as most people who follow you won’t tend to visit your page)
3. Write your first update to let people know what you are up to
4. Find some people to follow (feel free to follow me if you want to, or add some well known celebrities like Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross or Alan Carr – you might also find it useful to look who other people are following – e.g. if you are a librarian you might want to follow some of the people I’m following)
5. Integrate Twitter into your workstream – you might want to use the Twitter website but the chances are you will find it much easier if you integrate it with something you already use. You can use your mobile phone to update your status, and if you have an iPhone you can use one of the many Twitter apps such as Twitterfon or Tweetie to update your own status and view updates of those you’re following. If you use Firefox you might want to use an extension like Twitterfox; if you use Facebook you can add Twitter to your Facebook account. There are also a number of gadgets to embed into start pages like Netvibes, or you can download programs to add to your desktop.

Hopefully that’s helped clear up a little bit what Twitter is and how you get started with it.

My own use of Twitter

Personally, I use twitter as a form of networking; I mainly follow other librarians to find out what they’re up to. Sometimes I’ll find an interesting titbit of information about a project they’re working on, or a recommendation of software, or a link to an interesting article, but it’s also quite nice to get to know other librarians in an informal way. I use my twitter feed to notify “followers” of new blog posts (using Twitterfeed), and use my Twitter updates to update my Facebook status at the same time.

It’s also interesting to follow what is happening at conferences you are unable to attend – I have followed a number of US conferences this way, not quite the same as being there but at leats you get an idea of what is happening.

Another use for Twitter is asking for help – this can be useful if you have followers who know a certain location better than you, or if you know people might be able to offer advice about how to do certain things (this is particularly useful if people who are following you have similar software needs, I’ve noticed some librarians using Twitter to get help on their systems). There’s a wealth on knowledge out there which Stephen Fry comments on in his video.

Companies using Twitter

I had an interesting Twitter experience with a company earlier this week. I was trying to find a better way of sharing the layout of one of our rooms in the library on the web (at present you have to download a document). I thought there must be a web program that allows you to design layouts and share them, and thankfully I was right. Floorplanner.com is a program that enables you to layout rooms to scale and add in furniture (this would have been really useful in the past when I was trying to help re-design an office layout). It’s very easy to use so I set up a rough mock up in about 30 mins; then I needed to label the sections (the reason I was trying to do a layout was that we have a collection that is a little unusually arranged at the moment). I added text labels which was fine, but I thought it would be nice to link sections to relevant web pages to find out more information. I tried adding HTML into the captions but unfortunately it doesn’t support HTML links. I posted a tweet asking if anyone knew of a similar program that would allow me to use HTML in the labels, and within an hour got a response from the Floorplanner’s twitter account thanking me for the suggestion and saying they would look into adding HTML support. What a great way of getting customer feedback!

Libraries using Twitter

Following on from that. it makes logical sense that libraries too could benefit from Twitter. There are already some libraries experimenting with using Twitter to update their users on latest news (see Birkbeck for a UK example and a whole list at Twittering libraries here and here), but wouldn’t it be great if we could use Twitter to gain feedback from users and try to act upon it?

I did a search recently for our library and was pleased to see that a member of the public had used our library to study (the person in question was a writer) and commented on Twitter at how she’d found a nice place to study and was impressed with the library. At the time there weren’t many people using Twitter, but I think I will be setting up an RSS feed of a Twitter search for our libraries to see if there are more people mentioning us and see if there’s anything we can act upon to improve our service.

The future?

It seems like Twitter is certainly gaining popularity, there have been more articles in the press about Twitter recently and it certainly seems that some of the more Web 2.0 type companies are using it as a form of communication. It will be interesting to see if it continues to grow this year or if this time next year we’ll all be wondering what the point of Twitter was. Personally, I think it’s a very simple idea and those are the ones that usually succeed. It gradually gained popularity during 2008 (although it wasn’t presented at any events I attended it was usually mentioned informally by either speakers or delegates), and it certainly seems like the “Twitterverse” is growing rapidly in 2009 so far.

I don’t know if it’s something that will become popular in libraries but I can certainly see a use for it in updating users (both by them following the library as well as by publishing tweets to the library homepage for short updates), as well as for getting informal feedback from our users who mention the library of the service they received. Definitely food for thought, particularly as it’s gathering popularity in the mainstream.

Is anyone using Twitter in their library at the moment or know of any good examples of different uses of Twitter? Please share in the comments.

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