Thing #5

Twitter and Facebook!
I have used both of these applications, with different purposes in mind. My facebook account, which I will not be sharing here, is personal account that I use to keep up with friends and family. I prefer to keep it separate from any professional use. I use it to communicate with my daughter in college, and to visit virtually with friends and family that live far away and some that do not live far away. I enjoy seeing pictures that people post of their activities and their children. Although I have enjoyed it, and it is fun, I do not use facebook as often as younger people. I would rather talk to people in person. I have to admit, though, that I have never been a phone talker either, so this may be something about me, not necessarily my age. I have friends who post quite regularly to facebook.
I have mixed feelings about libraries and institutions being on facebook. I know a lot of them do it, but that is not the interaction I want on facebook. I don't want messages from my library or some other place on my newsfeed. I know we keep hearing about e-mail being dead, but if facebook is going to be used for professional communications, then I would rather have two accounts--one personal and one business. I don't like to mix the two.
I first used Twitter last year, and I used it primarily for professional reasons. I thought it would be a way to keep up with authors, and also to get breaking news from "big names" in the library world. It was, but it was also something else, extremely annoying. I don't care which tie John Green wears to an awards dinner, really. I also don't care what someone is fixing for dinner or what time they started doing inventory. I found that there was more "noise" than helpful info, so I basically quit using it. I still have the account, but I follow very few people, and I don't tweet much. Perhaps these issues had to do with people's excitement over a new toy, but I found it wasn't that useful. My reader with my blog subs was much more valuable to me as far as keeping up professionally. Using twitter to back channel sounds intriguing to me, though. This use could restore usefulness to it, at least as far as I am concerned. I can see using it with students for brainstorming, voting, mini-discussions, and many other things. The fact that posts must be under 140 characters could make for good practice in editing for students as well. I can share that idea in 50 characters!