I suppose I’d just add that Twitter is now probably my main work-related social networking tool, and a (to me) valuable source of information and opinion. It’s easy and “light” and “does one thing well”. You can follow ppl who don’t follow you and vice versa, without feeling any pressure to “reciprocate”.

I don’t feel any particular expectation to update a lot, or have any expectations about other ppl’s updates, and the frequency of my posts varies a fair bit depending on what I’m doing, or how I’m feeling!

I have some sympathy with Ade’s point that being on the remote receiving end of event-related posts can become a bit tiresome if they are coming thick and fast, and you have fifteen ppl saying pretty much the same thing at the same time. I think some of the clients, like Tweetdeck, have filtering options that might help in those contexts, but I haven’t played around with them enough to say whether they solve that problem.

The work v non-work boundary is a bit of an issue, and I now consciously read/update less at evenings/weekends than I used to. But, otoh, (again like Owen), for me, part of the appeal of Twitter is that “personal” dimension: I don’t want to hear about work stuff all the time, and I enjoy hearing ppl talking about current news items or watching the footie or listening to music or going to the cinema or cooking or whatever.

Within reason, obviously: I don’t want a minute-by-minute commentary on some ghastly television programme that I’m doing my best to steer clear of. But that is more an issue of “overload”/”spamming” than the topic itself. And I think ppl generally do develop a feel for what is “acceptable” – and even if they do occasionally go over the top, hey, in half an hour it’s over and done.

Having said that, I’m also conscious that the informality and the feeling of being “amongst friends” does make it very easy to forget that one’s smart-arse one-line put-down is going to be public and persistent, or to give out more information than perhaps is wise. Mostly for that reason, I recently opted to “protect” my posts (which means that ppl have to request to “follow” me in order to read them and I don’t accept those requests willy-nilly). That means that my posts have a smaller audience, but I’m quite happy with that – I have no interest at all in figuring in the “Top 10 Twitterer lists” which seem to be flavour of the day – and it has made me feel a bit more comfortable with the context (though of course, yes, the one-liners are still “out there”….).

I really like the feeling of community chat: seeing people I know sending @messages to other people I know is somehow very satisfying and somehow reinforces my online social network.

At the moment I only have work people on twitter, whereas facebook is a mix of work and home. I had thought my work/life boxes needed to be strictly seperated, especially once I became a mum, but actually I’m loosening up a bit. I find I quite like home leaking into work (but I’d rather avoid work leaking into home!)

I find Twitter useful, and perhaps even more than that, enjoy using it. Definitely the community I am related to on Twitter is key to both usefulness and enjoyment. Some people I know relatively well, and some I only know through online interaction. I started by following people I knew already – and by this I probably mean people I had met, probably several times, in the flesh. By browsing their followers I found people that I knew, or possibly had met once, or knew of.

At this point I was following a small number of people, and had a few following me.

I then noted that people were ‘conversing’ (using ‘@’ in front of a username so it appears as a ‘reply’ in your feed) with people I didn’t know. I was a bit reluctant to start following these people I didn’t know, feeling it could be intrusive. But gradually I relaxed, and started following some of these people.

Since then my ‘community’ has grown generally either when I’ve been followed, and decided to follow back (I don’t do this automatically), and when I met people at conferences.

Interestingly I started to follow quite a lot of fellow delegates when I went to ALA this year, but shortly after I returned I unfollowed most of them – as I found that waking up in the morning to large amounts of twitter was not useful or interesting or fun!

As an example, I ‘met’ John Kirriemuir on Twitter through a Friend-of-a-Friend type connection, and although I don’t feel quite like I ‘know’ him perhaps in the way I would if I had met him in the flesh, I do feel that initial barrier has been broken down.

I think that the comment about gaps between updates is slightly unfair – although I update frequently, I don’t expect other people to do the same, and some that I follow go days between updates. This is a different type of use, but no less valid I don’t think. I also tend to treat Twitter as a 2-way medium – I don’t think I’d be so interested in updating by SMS a large proportion of the time if I wasn’t seeing the reaction/replies. However, I think you can just update when you are online, even if that’s just a short time each day.

I think the home/work thing is an issue, but it is also a strength I think. I’m a bit more ‘home’ in Twitter, using it to say things about my family and home life as well as about my work. I hope these aren’t off putting (and I was generally inspired to do this when I realised that I actually quite enjoyed hearing other people’s ‘home’ news, even when I didn’t know them that well) – but someone did mention the other day that they sometimes felt a bit ‘voyeuristic’ reading my Twitter. This is clearly not the intention, and I hope I generally get the balance right – but it is a balance.

When I was working in an office I used to share things I noticed with the people around me (much to their irritation, I’m sure!). Now that I’m working from home I think of Twitter as a way of continuing to do that and of listening in on other people’s streams-of-consciousness. I like the way that Twitter is used to share information, too. How else would I have found out the price of mincemeat in UK supermarkets yesterday?!

Now I think I’m addicted. Personally I think there’s too much football-related discussion, but then I used to find that when I worked in the real world too…

I’m now on my third Twitter account and I do *get* it. It’s all in the followers, basically. If you don’t have many followers, or they are quiet, then there’s really not much point; you’re effectively just microblogging. Once the number of followers of mine (I am @joe_librarian) went over about 80 they seemed to start going up without much effort.

Now I have a very concentrated almost live-news summary of what’s happening in the various sectors I’m involved in. And other stuff that’s fun and/or interesting. Amount of effort on my part; very little, especially for the torrent of interesting, and useful, stuff I get back.