Twitter first impressions

I had heard of twitter but not investigated it prior to last week until I got talking to tricias at the 2simple party during BETT. She is a regular user and persuaded me I should have a go and try it out. Twitter is in a nutshell a social networking tool where people exchange 140 character messages about what they are doing with their group of online contacts, via the twitter website or various applications for mobile devices / computer desktops. There's quite an interesting 5 minute introduction to / discussion on twitter here on radio 4 (found thanks to a tweet yesterday). I had previously thought of twitter as just a social tool, but tricia assured me it could also be very useful from a work point of view (more so than usual if you work in IT I suspect).

Deciding to strike whilst the iron was hot I signed up the next morning as stevebob79, and selected tricias as my first person to 'follow'.

In at the deep end a little, as that evening I went to Teachmeet. This is an education IT 'unconference' (see the highlights of the evening for me here, in my work blog). The room was full of people who use twitter and they were doing so in ernest during the event, sharing tips and their feelings on what was being presented (as well as tips on location and number of beer vouchers remaining!). Many people were meeting in person for the first time at the event, having been communicating via twitter for some time. A feed from twitter was being shown on a screen at the side of the stage for everyone to see the comments (tagged with the event id, #tmbett09 for easy tracking). It transpires that apparently during the 2 hours of the event the tag was the 4th most 'tweeted' worldwide.

Anyway, teachmeet provided an immediate source of people to follow and by today, my third day using the service, I am following 30 people and being followed myself by 25. I have been really surprised by how many of the 'tweets' that come through are people sharing useful resources for work (yes, my current network consists almost entirely of ICT educators). I've already picked up 2 or 3 really useful resources / ideas that I can use or pass on the the schools I work with. By looking at who else the people you follow are twittering with you can quickly build up a network of people (they have a short biog to give you a bit of an idea who they are).

I'll be interested to see if the usefulness of using twitter slows down any as we get further away from BETT, or remains as this level. I'm optimistic though, having been told by skinnyboyevans of the success he had when he tweeted asking for top tips to pass on to his new ICT coordinators, and having heard on Friday from tombarrett about a geography lesson where children were challenged to locate various tweeters using google earth.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes. Please do add me (stevebob79) if you are using twitter. You can see my latest tweetings (twitters? tweets? - not sure on the lingo) on the feed to the right hand side of this blog. I'll keep using it and report back at a later date on how I'm getting on. I have to say, at this point I fear I may be in danger or becoming addicted...