Higher education faculty may find twitter difficult to “get” at first, but give the network some time to become familiar. Twitter offers users the chance to connect in a non-hierarchical environment, with other users in the same industry. Online faculty will appreciate the ability to connect with fellow academic conference attendees using the assigned hashtag. In addition, those wanting to teach online can use the search feature to find universities advertising positions or promoting its online programs using Twitter.
Twitter is hard for some people to “get” but I admit to loving it because it forces people (including myself) to be brief. With a limit of 140 characters, tweets must be reduced to the juiciest nuggets of information to spark the interest of its users. As an academic who likes to write, I admit that such pith is difficult, but I enjoy scrolling through my twitter stream quickly for interesting content.