Twitter and Flutter

Last week we read about Web 2.0 technologies. I knew about most of them, but I have admitted to many colleagues and friends that I still don't really "get" Facebook or Twitter. I just created a Facebook account last term, and members of my high school graduating class (from 1988 Eep!) have already friended me. I am not sure how much contact I want with the past. To be frank, it makes me rather uncomfortable. But since I do not wish to be "left behind", I did it.

However, Twitter, I really do not understand. I fail to see the point unless you are in a business or a situation where it is important to track people and their status up to the minute. I read the info sheet about Twitter that Emily provided to us, and while I kind of understand the idea of promoting cohension among a group of colleagues, I still don't see much worth from the example given. I did however, read a better example of how Twitter could be used at large conventions to keep track of presentations and also use tagging to classify information and ideas. See this post by Steven Bell on Library Journal regarding the recent ACRL conference and the participants' use of Twitter and tagging. (Thanks to Tim Siftar of Hagerty Library for sending me an email about that article!)

I am a long-time user of Yahoo Bookmarks, but I recently signed up for Delicious and have started to re-tag, re-categorize, and do some much needed weeding of my hundreds of bookmarks that I have collected on various computers since about 1995. In one of my internships I have started exploring Jing for creating short video tutorials. I used to use Camtasia Studio in my former IT job, and I think Jing is a great free alternative for those libraries and non-profits on a tight budget. I will be creating tutorials for our current OPAC at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Library of the Religious Society of Friends, and then when we upgrade the OPAC later in the year I will redo them.

I have not yet signed up for Twitter, as my brain is still all a-flutter about this application. However, I did enjoy this video. Parody or the next killer app? You decide.

Flutter

(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish for the link.)

Doreva