Welcome to everyone from UBC Library. Welcome also to any students from the SLAIS class “Social Media for Information Professionals” (taught by Dean Giustini). Are there any students from the class here today? For the SLAIS students, TOTS (Tools for Outreach & Teaching Series) is an occasional series for UBC Library staff on social software tools. Speakers are from within the library and share their knowledge and experiences. Thank you to Peter James for refreshments! Why microblogging? Earlier this year, Susan, Katherine and I were talking about future topics for TOTS and we realized Twitter has become much more prominent in the last year and that both Twitter and another tool called Yammer were being used all over campus (in faculties, support services etc). We have been exploring it as a tool but we also have more to learn about it.
This is the 9 th session in the series. This past year we have offered: two sessions on Google tools one on real time communication tools one on mobile devices (following on from the M-Libraries conference in July). For information on these session and to find out more about these tools, take a lok at the TOTS wiki: TOTS wiki – reminder that you can see information related to this session and past sessions. http://tots.pbworks.com
We have 6 speakers today. Most will be speaking about Twitter. We are glad to have our first SLAIS student speakers today. Daniel is in the Social Media for Information Professionals class, taught by Dean Giustini. TOTS sessions are designed to explore the possibilities of a tool but also to show the challenges, so we are glad to have a speaker talking about why they do not use Twitter.
“ EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.” They publish journals, offer webinars, conferences and other professional development opportunities to all those working in higher education who are interested in working with information technology. Excellent website if you are interested: www.educause.edu
Microblogging tools can be integrated with other social software – e.g. social networking sites such as Facebook
Twitter is easily the most popular microblogging tool. Internet users who already use a social networking site – 35% use Twitter. Analysis of survey data also shows these users are more likely to use Twitter or a similar service, even despite age or use of a mobile device. Mobile devices/wireless access – owning a wireless device makes an internet user more likely to user Twitter. Median age of a Twitter user is currently 31. Twitter traffic – that said, most users post once a day, one in five have never posted. Hand over to Daniel to introduce Twitter as a networking and information gathering tool.
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