sociaLISe

While reading “10 ways library schools should be teaching social media” I found myself focusing on the author’s promotion of Twitter. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: tweeting isn’t for me. Hooker mentions the number one complaint against Twitter a number of times – “the signal-to-noise ratio.” For whatever reason, most people who care to micro-blog are updating us on the minutiae of day-to-day life or just letting it all hang out (figuratively, thankfully) and have us screaming, “TMI!” I’m well aware, however, that there are organizations, prominent bloggers/authors and other parties who do attempt to use Twitter in a more productive way but my question is: why Twitter? Why use this particular forum to spread the news or your gospel when it’s criticized for its (lack of) content? Social media continues to evolve and in some instances carves out niches as well – consider social networking… MySpace was open to everyone and their uncles; enter Facebook, a social networking site that was initially only available to university/college students. Now there are social networking sites for professionals (LinkedIn, Qapacity), Internet wizards (Pingsta – ok, it’s more of a collaborative tool but I’m not splitting hairs), and work colleagues (Yammer) – even atmospheric scientists have their own social network (AtmosPeer). Where is the grown-up version of Twitter? Surely there’s room on the interweb for another micro-blogging platform that prizes quality over quantity.