Genomics Blog

In the last Twitter Snips I used a painting from around 1640 to make a point about the modern world of Twitter and this week I came across yet another painting to help make a point.
This one is a 1922 painting by Paul Klee called the "Twittering Machine" and it is currently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Klee certainly had no inkling of the online Twitter but he may just have had a sense of the noise that could be created when you tether live birds to a machine (in this case driven by a hand crank). The modern online Twitter has the potential to become nothing more than a 140 character noise machine, driven by technology. It is no better, or worse, than the people who add the content. Just like a printing press can be used for propganda, a video camera for pornography or dcumentaries, and a radio can bring us up-to-date news or music, Twitter is what you make of it and we try to make the most of this unique and sometimes controversial site.

As the Communications Director for Genome Alberta I use it for a number of things.
-  When we had a statement read in the legislature wishing us good luck in our projects I was able to enlist the help of an MLA throughh Twitter.
-  Links from people or organizations we follow help us find content for GenOmics and many original GenOmics stories make it back to Twitter which helps drive web traffic to our pages
-  The Twitter community helps us re-post important information such as the recent announcement about the Genome Canada Large Scale Applied Research Competition
- We post links to all our blog entries and newsletters
-  Twitter has helped us get new links from other blogger and science writers

In short Twitter has helped take an orginzation with a limited budget and small number of staff reach out across Canada, into the United States, and across the Atlantic.
Every 2 weeks here on Twitter Snips we give you a list of some of the more interestingly , and some just plain fun, postings we've come across. We've also offer a little bit of information on jsut who these people are - check the links and find out a little more for yourself.