Reflecting on Thing 4

What? (recalling)
Thing 4 was all about current awareness tools. The three we explored in particular were Twitter, RSS and Pushnote. I didn't do a huge amount for this Thing, as I already use and love Twitter and Google Reader. As for Pushnote... well, see below.

So what? (evaluating)
There's an interesting split in cpd23 (and everywhere else) between Twitter evangelists and Twitter sceptics. I'm still not sure what the tipping point is where you 'get' Twitter. For me it isn't about accumulating followers, but more about making new connections, discovering stuff that I wouldn't have known about, challenging myself to be interesting and funny in 140 characters, getting answers to my questions, and seeing great tweets retweeted and amplified. It was good to see it on the cpd23 programme and I hope that the people who signed up (or re-investigated it) have come to love it to as unhealthy enriching a degree as I have. Google Reader was used by lots of people already - I think it's a good fit for librarians as it allows us to gather up massive amounts of information but also go some way to organising it. And then there's Pushnote, which I actually started to feel quite sorry for, so many people were generally 'meh' towards it! I reckon that Pushnote's problem is that there's no critical mass of users yet, as well as being restricted in terms of browsers. It was a good lesson in itself though, since maybe part of using the social web is being selective and figuring out that not all tools are going to work for you.

Now what? (applying)
I'm pretty happy with how I use Twitter, but I might be a bit more adventurous with my RSS feeds (my 90-odd subscriptions feels a lot but is positively tiny compared to some people's tally!) and use Google Reader more intelligently in terms of organising and sharing items. If I'm honest, I probably won't pursue Pushnote. Like Cinderella, it may get to go to the social media ball one day, and maybe if I see it in a pretty dress and nice shoes, surrounded by cool, popular netizens, I will be very shallow and take up with it again. But not today.

Photo by Lady-bug on Flickr