Twitter: The Modern Versatile Communictaion Tool

This week marked another mile stone in as far as my understanding of the Twitter is concerned. The participatory kind of lecturing delivered by a competent ICT Developments & Applications in LIS lecturer enriched me with more knowledge on the use of Twitter.

I now know that Twitter can be analyzed from four different perspectives. Firstly as a form of social network, secondly as part of the blog, thirdly as part cell phone and finally as an Information Management tool.

Previously, I used to have problems in sharing websites with long URLs on Twitter because most of the URLs had characters exceeding 140 characters yet Twitter accommodates only 140 or less characters. This is no longer a problem because I have learnt how to shorten such URLs using Google URL Shortener and I am already benefiting from this facility.

I also learnt that registered members of Twitter can enjoy the following services:

·   post massages (tweets) as well as other users’ massages (re tweets) that they find interesting and want to share with their friends and followers;

·   read their follower’s tweets and re tweets;

·    send  private massages to any of their followers and

    use Twitter or search engine to find tweets that have been grouped using hashtags eg. #sScescal2014”

Apart from learning  how Twitter symbols such as @ and # are used, I explored that Twitter is being used in various fields of study such as in libraries, media, politics and in Churches. All these use Twitter for various purposes but I noticed that the major purposes is for current awareness i.e. communicating breaking news before other media channels. No wonder millions of people re tweeted a Tweet by Barrack Obama after claiming victory in the 2012 US election. 

As a librarian, I have been  very interested in knowing how this versatile facility could be made use in a Library environment and I discovered that it could be used as a tool for instructing and making announcements to clients among others.

I, therefore, wish to emphasise that I find the course worth doing and interesting though the content is overwhelming and so demanding but I feel as a postgraduate student, this is the way to go, after all, I have to show that I am different from a an undergraduate student by being confronted with such tough tasks.