Luke Rosenberger gave a presentation at the HDI conference in San Antonio in 2009 about using microblogging at the help desk. He discussed how microblogging allows help desk staff to engage with internal and external users in a quick and mobile-friendly way. Microblogging provides notification, awareness and engagement to help focus attention and be responsive to users' needs anywhere and anytime.
33. what who when where why how @lukelibrarian http://twitter.com/lukelibrarian [email_address] [email_address] Icon graphics: "Modified Human Theme" by Hucz Creative Commons license CC-BY-SA-2.5 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Modified_Human_icons review & share this presentation: http://bit.ly/hdi-sa
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Hi, I'm Luke, and I'm a librarian. I don't know if you've had a librarian speak 2 ur group b4, but if I've ever met a professional group with a need for the right info in the right place at the right time, u are it - and that's exactly what we do. So 2day I'm going 2 talk 2u abt one possible piece of ur "right-info-right-place-right-time" strategy, & that is twitter. So let's c 1 thing: how many of u have twitter accts personally? how many using twitter in ur org? look around, these are good resources 2 talk 2. As u can c, I want us to get to all-important "why" question - because "why" is often 1 of the most useful questions we can ask at the helpdesk, but also can b 1 of the most neglected.
But on the way to the "why" question, it's important 2 lay the foundation with the who, what, when & where. So let's begin by talking about the "what".
The announcement for this talk used a very good word: "microblogging". Twitter is not the only microblogging service out there, but I focus on it because it is the major player in that space. Others may have certain functional pros or cons relative to twitter, but they do not have nearly as big a community around them. So let's understand "microblogging" by looking at it relative to "blogging".
Major characteristics of blogging: (1) it gives users a simple, public, unmediated web-publishing platform...
(2) using RSS, it makes that published content available for auto-republication elsewhere
(3) RSS allows users to bring all the feeds they are interested together in one place, such as a feed reader or personal portal.
So let's compare. In the blog world, the basic published unit is the blog post or article. Each can stand on its own (uniquely linkable with its own persistent URL), but they are generally presented on the main blog page in reverse chronological order.
...if I'm interested in keeping up with all blog posts or articles coming from a particular source, I access the RSS feed for that blog and add it to my feed reader or personal portal...
...and then that's where I can read all the new updates from a wide variety of sources all in one place. So how does this relate to microblogging services like twitter?
Well, all the basic elements are present, they're just "micro" -- smaller and quicker. The basic unit is a tweet, which is like a blog post but with a maximum of 140 characters. It also is uniquely addressable with a persistent URL, and you can go to a user page for any twitter user and see their tweets presented in reverse chronological order.
If I find someone's tweets interesting and want to stay abreast of new tweets by that person, I "follow" them, a one-click process that's even quicker & easier than following the RSS feed of a blog.
To see new tweets from all people I follow aggregated in one place, I simply go to my own twitter home page and look at the "timeline", where all those streams of tweets come together and are arranged in reverse chronological order. - And that's it -- it's basically that simple. There are some other features like private direct messages, user profiles, etc., but that's the basic process. So what's the big deal? How could something this simple and seemingly obvious be so earth-shakingly powerful?
The simplicity itself is a big part of the power. It's completely text-based, so it's very familiar. The initial learning curve is very short -- although one can always learn more about using twitter effectively, getting up & running is very quick. And dashing off quick 140-character tweets requires less cognitive overhead than composing a more lengthy blog post.
Twitter is built for flexibility and publishes its simple API on a wiki for the whole world to see. That API is completely HTTP based and RESTful, which means it takes input and provides output in standard protocols and in a wide range of formats. Result: huge ecosystem of supporting services, applications, utilities, tools. Read/post via web, client app, mobile, SMS, email, program, bot, RSS feed.
The community of twitter users has also enhanced is power with certain conventions. When you reply or mention another twitter user, you preface their username with @ so that a simple search for "@lukelibrarian" finds all replies or references to me. You acknowledge & pass along interesting tweets to your followers by "retweeting" ("RT @lukelibrarian:") Hashtags allow tweets for a particular topic or event to carry a common tag for search & retrieval.
So what could twitter be for the help desk? You may have already thought of many possible applications, and I'm interested in hearing them - but for right now I'll focus on three.
Twitter can be a notification mechanism. Help desks need ways to get messages out to users quickly and effectively -- whether they are announcements of system status, planned/unplanned downtime, known issues under investigation, or threats that require vigilance or action (i.e. phishing or malware). Twitter can be an effective part of that strategy.
Twitter can be an awareness service. Help desk professionals need to stay informed and current, with one eye on the horizon, constantly doing a scan of our environment, constantly understanding and re-evaluating strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Twitter can be a part of that strategy as well.
Twitter can be a medium for engagement. An effective help desk is one that understands the needs of its stakeholders -- their work, their concerns, their goals. Twitter can be one medium where that conversation can take place.
So now we have arrived at the "why" question. Ultimately, though, I can't answer "why" for your organization, because the whys are going to be very different for your organization than mine, and that of the person sitting next to you or across from you. Therefore, I'm going to invite you...
...to do the "gap analysis" yourself, for your organization, in each of these three areas. Look at where you are vs. where you could be/want to be. What's missing from your notification toolbox? What's missing from your awareness toolbox? What's missing from your engagement toolbox? If current practices not broken but just don't go far enough, don't replace them - integrate and enhance.
Finally, I want to look at some concerns that are sometimes raised as reasons why not to do twitter -- because in a number of these cases, I really believe that although they present as reasons "why not" to do twitter...
...they are really more about how to do twitter well and in a way that works for ur organization. Exposure? examples: @downfor, #refworks. Time & attention? examples: email/RSS integration, website widget. Liability? Review professional communication expectations, sign tweets
