Social media etc

On Monday it was year since I started using Twitter and Facebook.  I’m a sporadic user of Facebook, which I find tends to be more personally focused.  It’s a different story with Twitter.  Despite my deep scepticism as to the utility of 140 character posts before starting, I’ve found Twitter to be useful on a host of fronts - discovery, dissemination, conversation, identification.  Through following journalists, academics and book bloggers (I’m pretty choosy who I follow - people who have interesting things to share; I’m not interested in personal info and what people are wearing or eating, or where they are; or in following back for the sake of it), I’ve a constant stream of news and links to stories, articles and new books, letting me keep on top of developments in fields I’m interested in and to find new, interesting scholars and authors.  I can also share my own work, whether that be blog posts, papers or books, and that of others, and I have little doubt that people have discovered interesting stuff through my tweets.  I’ve also had a series of interesting conversations with folk, and identified potential contributors for events and projects.  Put short, it’s become a core part of my academic life.  I would have scoffed at that suggestion a little over a year ago.  My handle is @robkitchin