Hi Di, thanks for the question.
We only intend to use Twitter for pushing out brief and informal snippets of information, both from PBPeople and "re-tweeting" those which we've seen others put out that we believe are relevant to Protective Behaviours. In general our tweets are likely to just be a "headline" that would direct you to Forum or Website content (new resources, meeting notes etc.)
It's not necessary to have a Twitter account or to even visit our Twitter page, as the PBPeople front page automatically shows the most recent Tweets.
Personally I think for a subject-based community site like ours there is a role for the transient type of communication which Twitter/Facebook etc. encourages, but it is only a minor one. It is a fact of life now that there will be some people who would prefer to use a "social medium" like Twitter as their first way of getting in touch with us - it certainly won't be our policy to use it for continuing discussions - that is what the Forum is for. For us the huge strength of Forum-based interaction is that sites like Google and Bing can fully index our pages, meaning the discussions become a knowledge base for the future. It also, I believe, encourages a more considered approach to the language used. I'm not entirely sure why that so often doesn't happen in other forms of social media. For example, this reply post....I have been tempted to use my favourite terms "social incontinence" or even "twitterhoeia" but because I've taken my time composing the reply I didn't use them :ohmy:
Steve
"build it and they will come...." (Field Of Dreams)
Twitter: @flavouristuk
