Marc Tolson - For assignment 5-3 of Maryland Spring 2 2018 LATI I decided on Twitter as a social media platform to evaluate. Full disclosure, I’m not a Twitter user, and really have no interest in joining; I like editing!
The first thing I noticed in my review was a lack of clear, concise explanation of what the platform is and, from the company’s perspective, what are its best uses. Any explorer of the website is confronted with a lot of vague platitudes about “expression” and “connections”, but in terms of organizational effectiveness I had difficulty deciphering the platforms usefulness. Specifically, Twitter seems to value volume over content, which could broadcast basic information quickly, but if the library has a website, for example, such a broadcast could easily be accomplished by a more versatile and detailed method. I did find an article about how it is creatively used by a library in Scotland with unique circumstances, but I think its effectiveness was due more to the creativity of the library staff than the platform itself.