Post 2 - Blog every day of June

Day 2 and lots and lots of thoughts going around in my head.

Something I do daily is check Facebook and my Twitterstream continuously - so much easier to do with my iTouch and Windows 7 phone (love that phone!) than it was when I had to keep checking a computer to keep up to date. I find my PLN (personal learning network) on Twitter invaluable. I have purposely kept my followers (and those I follow) to a small number (although I think I have gone over 100 now) so that I can easily keep track of tweets as they appear. Following too many people means I lose sight of many of the threads of conversation that are happening simultaneously.

I love the Twittelator app for my iTouch - I actually prefer to use it over twitter.com because it loads where I finished reading the last time I used it, as opposed to the Twitter site, which loads at the most recent tweet, meaning I may need to scroll down pages of tweets to pick up where I left off. Twittelator also colours my tweets green and any replies to my tweets are brown - love it! I wish Twitter would do that - I thought it may have been a feature in the 'new Twitter', however I haven't been able to find it if that is the case.

I do vet those that ask to follow me - they need to be directly associated, somehow, with others in my PLN or be involved in the library industry (apart from Master Chef :) ). If I approve someone following me, then I follow them. I see no point in having followers that can see my tweets and I can't see their's. Likewise, if I follow someone, then I like them to follow me. I regularly compare the two lists and think seriously about removing those I follow that don't follow me.

So what are the benefits, for me, of having a PLN?

collaborative sharing and learning. Ruth, from Creative Circ, blogged here about the way she used Twitter to crowdsource (love that term!) topics for a potential conference paper and how it helped engage her with a future audience. Brilliant.

It's somewhere I can discuss ideas and explore them with others.

I have access to a global learning community of very active library people who are more than happy to share their expertise.

It is another source of information for me. Recently it has been my first port of call.

It may be informal, but it is still a method of learning for me.

It puts some randomness back into my life :) Where else would I hear that someone burned their dinner for the third time in a row because they were busy catching up on tweets? Or about emphysemic pets and how germs cannot live in an alcoholic environment!

I love how, the more I use Twitter, the more creative ways I find that people are using it.

So, how does Twitter benefit you?