Thoughts on my first 24 hours of Twitter

Yesterday, right about this time, I announced that I had joined the Twitter Nation (@denisejohnson1). I am following about 67 people so far, mostly in the technology and children's literature worlds. Here are my thoughts so far:

Pros:

Professional Development: A number of the people I am following are attending the ISTE and ALA conferences going on right now. I was able to connect to a live stream of the lunch speaker at ISTE, Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann) and learn about some really cool sites from those in sessions who were "live" tweeting. Several people at ALA sent tweets with pictures of authors or new book releases. I would not have been aware of any of these events if it had not been for Twitter.

Cool Factor: I know which book Judy Blume just finished reading (yes, Judy Blume Twitters @judyblume) and I watched Neil Gaiman's 2010 Carnegie Medal acceptance speech.

Cons:

It's addicting: I can't believe how fast the time has gone. I didn't get anything accomplished on my to-do list. I am trying to figure out how those who follow thousands of people do it.

Think before you follow: I think you have to be careful about who you follow if you are using Twitter as a professional development tool. Some people tweet for purely social reasons, which is fine, but I already have problems with "time suck" after only 24 hours. It makes me think before I tweet!

At the end of the day (and I pretty much monitored my Twitter feed all day), I felt as if I had learned a lot and that my time wasn't was completely wasted. I look forward to learning more about Twitter--how to maximize its potential and how to minimize "time suck." If you have ideas, please let me know.

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