Jen Millea @ education.au

Twitter, one of the world’s fastest growing social networking/microblogging services, gets some good press and some bad press. It’s a timewaster, pointless, full of mundane 140 character tweets about what people had for breakfast, say some. Personally I love it. I’ve posted before about Twitter and now I’m totally completely in thrall (well at least till the next big thing - probably Google Wave).

Why? Why does Twitter work for me?

1. Professional learning

Lots of people and organisations use Twitter to post resources, information, news, projects, comments, opinions, questions, reflections, ideas, suggestions. I’ve chosen to follow the people and organisations that are relevant and of interest to me - at the moment there’s about 250 of them.  Those that don’t delivery quality, relevant content get ‘unfollowed’ - those that remain have proved their worth. I no longer have to seek out information - fantastic, insightful, relevant, well written information comes to me via 140 character tweets filtered by people and organisations relevant to my own interests. Smart, innovative thinkers, people who question and wonder, are using Twitter and I’m able to participate, consider and ruminate along with them.

2. Immediacy

I’m getting that information ‘as it happens’ rather than waiting for Google or some other search engine to index it, and then for me to discover it - assuming it’s somewhere in a format that is indexed. I don’t have to rely on an algorithm to find me what it thinks I might be looking for. I don’t have to find relevant resources by looking through hundreds, thousands, millions of search results which may or may not be relevant (and who does that - it’s all down to the top 20) - it’s coming from my trusted sources and I can act on it immediately. When writing reports and doing research, this immediacy and authority of information is fantastic: you can be taking the latest thinking from trusted sources into account in your research right up to the last minute.

3. Networks

It’s enabled me to connect with people networks here in Canberra that communicate via Twitter and a range of other social networking services: and that’s another interesting thing - Twitter does not act alone in the social networking space. The people networks in Twitter often also have presences on Google docs, Ning, discussion lists, and other places and Twitter provides a kind of rolling commentary on what’s going on across that space. From following Canberra-based tweeps (people who tweet on Twitter), many of whom work in or with government agencies, I’ve come to ‘know’ a number of people quite well, what they think, what they are doing, and their areas of interest, as well as initiatives, projects etc they are involved in, as well as challenges, ideas, opportunities. In a government town, this is useful.

4. Serendipity

As you follow more people serendipitous discoveries occur: like reading headlines as you flick through a newspaper, the Twitter feed throws up ideas, comments, sources and resources that send your thinking in new directions. The potential of microblogging services to enable innovation purely through the random proximity of tweets as they flow past a user will, no doubt, be a PhD topic of the future.

5. Time saver

Some people argue that Twitter is a time waster. I find it to be the opposite. I have it running in my browser and just monitor what’s going on. Obviously I suffer from continuous partial attention disorder and have multiple connections running in my head simultaneously. I take notice of some tweeps more than others, and as I scan I take notice of some words more than others. Also, as much of the material I’m interested in is new, novel or innovative, if I was searching for it, I wouldn’t know what I was looking for. Now it finds me.

6. Broader than education

While I follow a lot of individual educators and educational organisations, I follow a range of others types of people too: those that work in ICT more generally, librarians, politicians, a few cultural organisations, a couple of IT news agencies, organisations like Creative Commons, libraries, and general news organisations like the ABC. This means that my knowledge of ‘what’s going on’ is broader than the education sector, but still relevant to my area of interest. This is good: the less siloing of knowledge and information, the better.

7. Bigger than Australia

People and organisations I follow are both from Australia and places other than Australia - such as the UK and the US. For me, they need to be English-language tweets as I don’t have time to use a automatic translater. But that, I’m sure, will become a service available one day, and enable a social networking between cultures regardless of the tweet’s original language.
Twitter, or any microblogging service, is not for everyone, any more than any other technology service. You have to have a reason to use it and a continuing reason to find it useful.  For me, I find it very useful in my professional life.

I use it from my laptop, and not from my phone or mobile device - though many can and do - so I’m only connected when I’m at the computer. As I telecommute it also prevents any sense of isolation developing: I’m connected, I’m networked.
I also find it fascinating that every person’s experience of Twitter (or another microblogging service) is different. Each tweep will follow their own set of people and organisations; a different set will follow them.

Twitter is not one-size-fits-all: every person creates their own network. Everyone to their own.

You can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/girtbysea