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Twittering away at UKSG |
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Kirsty Meddings, CrossRef |
1 May 2009 |
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With the amount of media coverage it's been getting lately, there are fewer and fewer people who haven't at least heard of Twitter, the freely available 'microblogging' site. Twitter invites users to answer the simple question 'What are you doing?' by posting an update, or 'tweet', on the Twitter website, by SMS, on a handheld device or via any number of desktop applications.
A tweet is limited to 140 characters, inclusive of spaces and punctuation. That's not very much. Exactly as long as this paragraph, in fact.
Twitter is built on a system of following and being followed, and your tweets go out to your followers as soon as you post them. You can limit your network of followers to just those that you choose to approve, or you can allow anyone to follow your updates (the latter is more common and, some would argue, more in the spirit of Twitter). Some people Twitter purely about professional issues and have a network made up of colleagues and associates, some use it for social purposes to update friends and family, and some for a combination of the two.
Many follow one or more of the celebrities that have taken to tweeting: Stephen Fry is a notoriously prolific Twitterer, and US celebrity Ashton Kutcher made the news just last week as the first to amass more than a million followers. Granted, following somewhat vacuous celebrity tweets isn't everyone's cup of tea, but if you are after more serious information you can follow the likes of CNN or BBC breaking news, and several publishers, organisations, institutions and libraries are now using Twitter to send updates to interested parties.
In fact, news of several recent events such as the terrorist attacks in Mumbai spread quickly via Twitter, and the first photo of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson hit the internet as a TwitPic. Interestingly, neither of these waves of information was started by official news organisations, but instead came from people who were eyewitnesses to the events as they unfolded, sending updates and pictures on their phones. By using keywords or 'hashtags' (tags preceded by a hash symbol) in their posts, Twitterers can contribute to larger pools of updates that are in turn monitored by others with searches set for those hashtags.
Hashtags aren't just useful for breaking news. They are used to share tweets with a wider audience with any common interest. A popular hashtag is #quote, for example, which brings together a feed of Twittered quotes. Hashtags also prove useful for tracking events such as conferences, and at this year's UKSG conference in Torquay there was a busy and interesting online conversation or 'back channel' on Twitter accompanying the sessions and making good use of the #UKSG09 hashtag.
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Tweeting the UKSG conference |
| Judging by what the final speaker Charles Leadbetter referred to as the "number of faces in the audience eerily lit by laptop screens", many people went paperless at this year's conference, taking notes electronically, and blogging and Twittering during the sessions. As anyone who set up a #UKSG09 Twitter search will know, the updates were frequent and at times a little overwhelming, but they also provided many interesting comments, observations, and parallel conversations about the topic in hand between audience members. One tweet quoted a speaker:
'Why aren't publishers initiating science blogs?' asks Jan Velterop at #UKSG09
to which came the response:
some are tinyurl.com/d7a22s but most researchers aren't going to want to blog on a publisher system #UKSG09
In the same presentation one audience member asked a more practical question:
Anyone have a definition of triples? #UKSG09
and was almost instantly in receipt of four or five helpful replies, some pointing to web pages with further reading. There were plenty more examples over the next few days of Twitter being used to clarify or expand on points made by speakers, and a browse through the tweets during or after any given session often neatly summarised the key points or gave a slightly different angle on the topic.
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Catching on |
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By Monday lunchtime the #UKSG09 hashtag was being used enough to get noticed by several websites that monitor Twitter usage and report on trends. On Monday evening I spoke to several people who had engaged in conversations over Twitter about presentations and workshop topics, most of which would not have happened offline. It was also good to see people seeking each other out in person after having exchanged tweets, to continue conversations in a more traditional manner with people that they probably otherwise would not have met.
There was even the conference's own contribution to breaking news. As several print publications landed on desks reporting news of Springer seeking new investors, the question was asked of Derk Haank at the end of his session, and the answer instantly twittered by several people:
Haank: Springer is "Not up for sale" #UKSG09
and the message was just as quickly re-tweeted (forwarded) by others not at the conference. This is just one example of how Twitter provided interaction with people outside the conference. Those who were unable to attend could follow the Twittering from their desk, and also join in by responding to questions and opinions. As one person said after the event:
I found the #UKSG09 tag really helpful. Couldn't attend but was able to follow what was happening from my office on Long Island.
Twitter posts also helped to give a flavour of the social side of the conference, with tweets from the evening events commenting on everything from the difficulty of the quiz to the quality of the moves on the dance floor, and updates during the sessions occasionally adding light relief and distraction:
#UKSG09 Woah!!! Jo James woke us up. And what a breath of fresh air, no PPT slides, yay!
#UKSG09 our speaker is oblivious to our plight "just in case you can't see at the back" - or, um, front?!
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The way forward or a passing fad? |
| Unfortunately, the Twitter archive is unreliable and limited. Twitter Search only gives access to the past month's updates based on hashtags, so as a tool for documenting the conference for posterity it's not particularly useful. But most would agree that this is not the point of Twitter: it's all about interacting in the present, not preserving the past, and in this sense it provided an interesting back channel at the UKSG conference. It will be interesting to see whether there is more or less Twittering at next year's conference, or whether a tweet from one of the sessions this year will ring true:
#UKSG09 google native student says facebook is so last year & what's the point of twitter!
For one UKSG tweeter at least, the purpose of Twitter was obvious:
I'll have another pint of Kronenbourg thanks (table 35) #UKSG09
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