A law librarian’s journey into the Twittersphere

Do you use Twitter?

“What’s all this nonsense about Twitter? It’s like Facebook, right? But you only do status updates? So you post things like, ‘I’m eating breakfast. I’m driving in my car.’ I don’t want people to know what I’m doing all the time! PASS!”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this. Can you guess what comes next? You got it! They sign up for Twitter to see what the fuss is about.

So what is this fuss about? What exactly is Twitter?

From the Twitter Web site:

“In countries all around the world, people follow the sources most relevant to them and access information via Twitter as it happens—from breaking world news to updates from friends. See what people are doing right now.”

That makes Twitter sound passive, like you are eavesdropping. This has not been my experience. Sure, at first it was strange. You have to find people to follow, and at that time, nobody I knew was on. So I started following celebrities: Wil Wheaton of “Star Trek” fame and Greg Grunberg from “Heroes” were the first two. I then started adding news sources and topical tweets. Finally, friends started appearing. Then I discovered that all of this can be accessed via text messaging! How cool that you can be kept up to date on various happenings through the text messaging feature on your phone?

Here are some tweeters you might consider following:
Off-the-record updates from Above the Law. Stuff you won’t see on CNN.

Law for all. Legal news of interest to general public and civic-minded attorneys. Leans more towards public interest.

The University of Kansas tweets their news updates so you don’t have to constantly check the Web site.

Law Humor posts funny law jokes, rants, anecdotes and true stories.

For those who don’t know, I’m a huge comic book geek. The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is a nonprofit company that helps defend the First Amendment rights of artists and vendors.

This is the official Twitter page of the White House.

Huffington Post posts political stuff.

The top news stories from National Public Radio.

CNN.com’s breaking news.

Ann Curry mixes news with life experience. I think I have developed a crush on her.

The official Twitter profile of the University of Kansas School of Law.

ME!

Happy Twittering everybody!

Blake