Twitter

To browse other articles on a range of HSL topics, see the wiki index.

Introduction

see also Libraries on Twitter, Social media landscape & Top Twitter Influencers for Health Librarians

Twitter is a “microblogging” (“tiny” blog) service that allows networks of users to send short updates to each other in less than 140 characters. It's also a platform for information dissemination, social networking and real-time communication similar to Facebook's status updates. Twitter is gaining popularity worldwide and estimated to have 200 million users, generating 75 million tweets a day and handling 800,000 search queries per day.

• For an introduction, see MLA's Twitter tutorial - http://www.mlanet.org/am/am2011/mpls/twitterindex.html
• Baumann Phil. 140 health care uses for Twitter.
• Hooker D. What is Twitter? Or, how to stop worrying and love to tweet. Presentation for TOTS Session 9, University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver, BC.

Use Twitter for Evidence-Based Practice

• For information gathering from people you trust
• Proliferation of open-access/grey literature increases need for creativity in locating best evidence
• Changing nature of scholarly communication makes peer-to-peer communication essential
• Locate many new sources of evidence all in one place

• See Using social media to connect with others: a discussion with student librarians March 16th, 2011
• Using Social Media to Promote Evidence-Based Practice Cochrane Canada Symposium February 16th, 2011

Twitter is social

Twitter is an example of social media's focus on sharing ideas within a network of contacts, friends and 'followers'. Twitter promotes information sharing and micro-posts as 'presence technology'. Twitter is also "...a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?" Users' posts on Twitter are called "tweets" and, its community, the "twitosphere". High-profile participants form part of the twitterati.

Twitter includes an API (application-programming interface) that twitterers can use to create applications. For example, a mash-up with Google Maps called Twittervision shows users geographical locations of Twitter users. When you want to update Twitter check out Twiddict, which will accept posts from Twitter-users and queue them until it is working again.

Archiving & citing

• Dupuis, John. (March 19, 2009). Twitter / John Dupuis: Ref Q: I'm a 1st yr and looking for essay topics for a math paper. Any general sources of info? A: The Princeton Companion to Mathematics! Retrieved February 25th, 2010 from http://twitter.com/dupuisj/status/1356028444
• Obama, Barack. (2009a, July 15). Launched American Graduation Initiative to help additional 5 mill. Americans graduate college by 2020: http://bit.ly/gcTX7 [Twitter post]. Retrieved from http://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/2651151366

See also Lee, Chelsea. (2009). How to Cite Twitter and Facebook, Part II: Reference List Entries and In-Text Citations. {blogpost} Retrieved from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/social-media/

Twitter & copyright

An interesting unresolved debate is whether tweets are copyrightable. Read American legal view 'Tweet Copyrightability'. In Canada, the concept of fair dealing governs tweets. Where it gets interesting is when tweets represents intellectual property / ideas of the author and whether they are intended for communication or larger purposes.

You can explore Twitter by setting up an account. Find friends to follow and start posting. The premise is simple - post tweets based on "what you are doing". Share content with your network. Networks are there for support; questions are asked, resources are found, and opinions are shared. It's the best ongoing global discussion going.

Twitter search tools

• Search for Doctors, Medical Students and other health professionals on Twitter
• Twitter search
• Monitter - a twitter monitor, lets you "monitter" twitter for three sets of keywords and watch what people are saying.
• TwitDir - a Twitter Directory

Twitter has inspired third-party clients and open source tools such as WittyTwitter, Twhirl, TinyTwitter (Windows Mobile) and http://m.twitter.com, which supports short messaging services (SMS) to send and receive tweets with no client or user interface (UI). For real fans, statistics sites are set up such as Twitterholic, Tweeterboard and Twaiku (Twitter Haiku's) and Twoosh when using exactly the maximum of 140 characters. The issue or phenomenon of digital presence in the 21st century is directly linked to Twitter. Digital access to friends is important for twitterers as they can tweet each other, have meet-ups or talk about books (see Public Reading with DailyLit via Twitter).

aggregators, dashboards, plugins, widgets

• Qwitter: catching quitters
• Snitter: twitter client
• Tiny Twitter
• Tweetdeck
• Twhirl (client for PC or Mac)
• TwitterBerry (Blackberry app)
• Twitter - Help Pages & FAQs
• Twitterrific - iphone
• Twittelator - iphone app
• Twittervision (mashup)
• Other apps - Twitter wiki list(s)

Canadian context

A number of Canadian librarians use Twitter such as Amy Buckland, Connie Crosby, Amanda Etches-Johnson, Darlene Fichter, Steve Matthews, Stephen Abrams and others. In 2008, I used Twitter as an information sharing tool in a health librarianship course at SLAIS with mixed results. For participating on Twitter, students were given bonus marks. Some Canadian health librarians on Twitter include: Dean Giustini, Tim Tripp and Mary-Doug Wright. See Canadian health librarians that Twitter

References

• Black EW, Thompson LA, Duff WP. Revisiting social network utilization by physicians-in-training. Journal of Graduate Medical Education. June 2010;2(2):289-293.
• Chretien KC, Azar J, Kind T. Physicians on Twitter. JAMA. 2011;305(6):566-568.
• Giustini D. Social media for health librarians. JCHLA/JABSC. 2010;32(2):73-75.
• Giustini D, Wright MD. Twitter: an introduction to microblogging for health librarians. JCHLA/JABSC. 2009;30(1) http://pubs.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/jchla/jchla1-09.html
• Kraft M. (Health) Libraries Leveraging Facebook and Twitter. October 2009 Midwest MLA Conference. Columbus, OH. http://www.slideshare.net/michellekraft/libraries-leveraging-facebook-and-twitter
• Mischaud E. Twitter: expressions of the whole self an investigation into user appropriation of a web-based communications platform. September 2007.
• Scanfeld D, Scanfeld V, Larson EL. Dissemination of health information through social networks: Twitter and antibiotics. Am J Infect Control. 2010;38(3):182-8.