Library Voice

Via @lancearmstrong, here are a few Tour de France riders who are on twitter.

TdF riders on Twitter. @levileipheimer, @bradwiggins, @dzabriskie, @christianvdv, @thedpate, @cadelofficial, @wegelius, @andy_schleck, @kaarvesen, @carlos_sastre, @mickrogers, @ghincapie, @markrenshaw1, @bdlancaster, @laurenstendam, @stevendejongh, @koendekort, @fumybeppu.

I currently follow Lance, Hincappie, and Leipheimer, as well as Johann Bruyneel.

A funny, but sadly true, look at Twitter.

Off to tweet some more. I’ve been away too long while posting this.  Gotta feed the habit.

So I was teaching a class this morning at another building on campus. Unfortunately the provided computer I was using was having network issues.  While we waited on the IT guys for the building to come in, I took the following picture with my phone and sent it to twitpic, which then sent the tweet to twitter.

Here’s what I posted on twitter with my phone:

Click to go to twitter page

Within 1 minute of sending that text to TwitPic, I got a text message from one of our system administrators at the library.  He asked me what room I was in, and if I needed help.  I replied that I was outside his territory, as I was in another campus building, not the library.  Although he could not help me, it was amazing that he could respond so quickly.

There are a few things here that made this work.  First, we have IT folks who get it.  Seriously, our library IT department is top notch in a lot of ways.  They’re willing to try new things such as twitter,  if only simply to see how they work and how they might be used.  Secondly, my colleague happened to be following me on twitter, and I also follow him.  If he had not been following me, he would not have seen the text at all.  Third, he happened to refresh the twitter page, and there I was.  Finally, he knew my cell number, so he was able to send me a text message.  He could have also sent me a direct message in twitter, but he had no way of knowing that I get direct messages via text messages on my phone, so a text message was the guaranteed way of asking me if I needed help.

While there are definitely some hoops to jump through, I can definitely see how an organization could use this for technical support or other kinds of immediate assistance.  (This also assumes we don’t see the twitter fail whale).  All of my colleagues in my department are on twitter, although some use it a lot more frequently (@cguder, @lolebek, @hagman) than others.  With the ability to extend twitter with pictures via TwitPic, with video via 12Seconds, and with SMS, twitter has the potential for being a very robust communication tool.

According to a report from Nielsen,  the largest number of visitors to twitter.com are in the 35-49 category.

Twitter Most Popular Among Working Adults

Twitterers (a.k.a. Tweeters) are not primarily teens or college students as you might expect. In fact, in February the largest age group on Twitter was 35-49; with nearly 3 million unique visitors, comprising almost 42 percent of the site’s audience. We found that the majority of people visit Twitter.com while at work, with 62 percent of the combo unique audience accessing the site from work only versus 35 percent that accessed it from home only.

Unique Visitors to Twitter.com by Age Demographic

Age Group	Unique Audience	Composition %
2-17	250,000	3.6
18 – 24	**	**
25 – 34	1,379,000	19.6
35 – 49	2,935,000	41.7
55+	1,165,000	16.6
65+	477,000	6.8

source: Nielsen NetView, 2/09, U.S., Home and Work
**These demographics have insufficient sample sizes

My only concern for this data is that I’m not sure what “insufficient sample sizes” means. I’d be curious how the 18-24 category compares, as that’s the demographic that academic librarians are trying to reach.  But from the data that is presented, Twitter does seem to be used primarily by the older (i.e., not college kids) crowd.

Pew Research Center: Twitterpated: Mobile Americans Increasingly Take to Tweeting.

This article from Pew has a lot of Twitter demographics:

A look at the demographic profile of Twitter users as a whole reveals some additional details about who uses Twitter and how they communicate and consume information.

As noted above, Twitter users are overwhelmingly young. However, unlike the majority of other applications with a similarly large percentage of youth, Twitter use is not dominated by the youngest of young adults. Indeed, the median age of a Twitter user is 31. In comparison, the median age of a MySpace user is 27, Facebook user is 26 and LinkedIn user is 40.⁵

Twitter users are slightly more racially and ethnically diverse than is the full U.S. population, most likely because they are younger — and younger Americans are a more ethnically and racially diverse group than is the full population.

Twitter users are also slightly more likely to live in urban areas, with 35% of Twitter users living in urban areas (compared with 29% of all internet users) and just 9% of Twitterers and status updaters living in rural areas, compared with 17% of internet users.

Are the Creators of Twitter Living in the Last Dreamworld on Earth? — New York Magazine.

Still trying to understand Twitter?  This article is one of the best that I’ve read, as it discusses a little bit of the tech, and a lot of the folks, behind Twitter.  I highly recommend it to read and to pass on to others who might not “get” what Twitter is all about.  So what is Twitter about?

“Twitter is not about the triumph of technology. It’s about the triumph of the human spirit,” says Twitter founder Biz Stone.

Facebook vs Twitter on TwitTip

Trying to figure out the difference between Twitter and Facebook?  This post may be helpful in understanding the two social networks, and perhaps help you decide whch one is for you.

Are you thinking of using twitter to reach customers or library patrons?  If so, this article from Business Week is a really informative read, and shows how actual questions and problems were resolved by using twitter. It serves as a good model for libraries who want to use twitter to help patrons and promote news and events.

One thing that I found especially interesting was the concept of a person, rather than an institution, twittering.  I know many libraries have started twittering, but many of these libraries tweet as the institution, with no person or face to tie the account to.  Here’s what Frank, aka @ComcastCares, says about having a face on twitter:

It’s not unusual for customers to address Frank or his team members by name. “Originally when I started to do this, I used the Comcast symbol instead of my picture,” says Frank. “Then I listened to some customer feedback, and one was: ‘Where’s your picture?’ Now when they think Comcast, they think Frank. Right now I have 5,700 followers. They know about my family Web site. It gives a face to Comcast.” Frank’s other Twitter team members go by the names ComcastBill and ComcastGeorge.

I think Frank makes a very important point here.  I believe our users will be more inclined to communicate with us via twitter, or even follow us, if we use twitter to give our library a face.  In other words, use twitter to increase your library’s presence and outreach to patrons, but don’t have a picture of your logo or you building.  Twitter is all about connecting with people, so make sure your library twitter account is a real person.