I’ve noticed a lot of people succumbing to Facebook and getting accounts there and I’m one of them. I joined about a week ago, added some of my friends, and then got incredibly frustrated at it.

A lot of my frustrations come from things where I can understand why they’ve done what they’ve done, but I wish they hadn’t. For example, I’ve gone to two different universities, and lived in two different countries. My friends come from a variety of places. However, I can only be part of one regional network at a time, and I can’t join the group for one of my old universities, as I need a current email address. The uni thing I can understand. The regional network bit baffles me though. Another annoying thing was that when I joined the network for my current university I was then no longer in the network for London. Annoying thing number 3 - I’ve got about 6 friends on there at the moment, but when I look at my profile I only see one, as he is the only one in the London Network.

I get the feeling that I’m missing something. That I just don’t ‘get’ it. So far, no one I’ve asked has been able to tell me what the appeal of the site is, except to say they love it. MySpace I get, even if I don’t like it (too much sound and graphics that make my eyes bleed). Ning, while I don’t have an account (Yet!!) I see it’s use. Same with LinkedIn. Facebook just looks boring, and not user friendly.

Is there an evangelist out there that can explain it to me?

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You can’t escape it at the moment. Everyone’s talking about it. South by Southwest has been taken over by it. It’s the next biggest smallest thing in blogging - Twitter.

It’s the newest, trendiest kind of microblogging. Rather than having to post something of length (or interest) you can post quick snapshots of what you are doing. It comes across as a stream of consciousness babble of ‘what I’m doing right now’. And yes, I know what you’re thinking. Why? There’s no point! People will just be posting endless nonsensical streams of ‘Oh my cat just did the cutest thing!’ and ‘I’m going to bed now’. Which, to be fair, it is used for. But it can be used for so much more.

There’s been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere of late talking about what libraries could be doing with Twitter, and what other applications people and organisations are using it for.

Libraryclips and Splashcast talk about applications for Twitter and the top tools for Twitter, and David Lee discusses library specific applications for it.

Here at micropersuasion, they have developed a basic Google search for Twitter, which could be useful, though I expect there’s an awful lot of content to be trudging through - you’d want quite a specific search!

It could be used for keeping track of what people are doing on a project, tracking what people are doing when working in disparate locations, keeping a personal running tally of reference questions, as a list making tool, a checklist, or just a way of communicating with your teammates.

If nothing else, it’s at the peak of the internet zeitgeist at the moment and it’s in our best interests to keep an eye on it. It might not have any lasting longevity - it might be one of those passing internet fads that have their hour in the sun, but it may not. It’s in the nature of these shiny new toys for them to gain popularity, and then gain more features, more functionality, more people writing hacks and tools and tips and tricks to integrate it into our work in ever more interesting ways. In a few years time, who knows how it might be being used? And in the meantime? It’s a pretty cool way of keeping track of what peoples cats are doing :)

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