My presentation for ONLINE 2009. This is the first half of a joint presentation with Karen Blakeman, hence the slightly abrupt ending.

1. Twitter 101:ONLINE 2009 Phil Bradley http://www.twitter.com/Philbradley @Philbradley

2. What is Twitter?

3. What does it look like?

4. Page Elements:

5. Background

6. ‘Dashboard’

7. Search, lists, trends

8. How can librarians use Twitter? Allows you to keep in contact with colleagues, to see what they're doing, what their interests are, read their opinions/thoughts/ideas

11. Keep informed about developments from publishers; both in terms of what they're publishing, but also events they're running

12. You can promote what your library service is doing. Attract new users, offer gifts or incentives, increase awareness and have fun!

13. Provide instant answers and point people in the right direction

14. Follow links to events, keep briefed on current affairs

15. Use Twitter as an RSS reader to keep up to date with blog entries

16. Share photographs quickly and easily, especially if using a smartphone

17. Ask questions using polls, Re-Tweet for maximum results

18. Keep involved with conferences even if you can’t attend them with 3rd party sites

19. Add short (3 minute) audio posts using Audioboo and add in a photograph as well!

20. Broaden your knowledge of a subject by following the right people/organizations

21. Ask questions! Answer questions!

22. Find new people to follow using Twitter search or 3rd party sites like WeFollow

23. Communicate more effectively Discuss events as they happen Send people Direct Messages

24. Follow authors

25. Follow dead people

26. And more... Networking, both professional, friend to friend News: new books, closing early, new staff Marketing tool Broadcasting content Updating a website via Twitter

27. Advantages Free Fast Simple Effective Brevity ‘Always on’ Instant information

28. Disadvantages Media hype ‘Fail Whale’ Brevity (what can you say in 140 characters?) Small number of users Spam 3rd party applications Viruses

29. Good practices: profile

30. Name and avatar

31. Location, Address, Biography

32. Tweets

33. Other (better?) interfaces

34. TweetDeck

35. What Twitter is NOT: A time sink (unless you have time to spare) Mr S Fry’s private playground About breakfast/lunch/dinner Ego boosting twaddle

36. Twitter Search

37. Twitter Search

38. Twitter Search

39. But wait! There’s more...