What is Twitter and Why Scientist Need to Use It is the title of a blog post worth reading. It makes the case for Twitter in a variety of ways. It points out for example that it forces an economy of words (Twitter restricts you to 140 characters), and my experience is that if you avoid garbled abbreviations you really do end up a sharper writer able to get to the point. Not a quality generally found in the science community. Can you convey meaningful information? Check the tweets listed here and look at the authors of those posts and you'll find there is real information to be found in there. As the blog post mentions, the Library of Congress is archiving tweets so they see some value in a selection of tweets. Twitter can bring people and researchers together, bring about a greater exchange of information, reach out to the public (who fund most basic research in one way or another ) and supplement, if not replace, some of the somewhat cumbersome ways researchers often communicate science news.
The links below are all checked, are all safe and are all people or organization we follow or who follow @mikesgene or @GenomeAlberta.
We encourage you to dig a little deeper into science and social media to see what can be gleaned from people who are active and in the know.
Thanks to Mary Canady (@Comprendia) and Bora Zivkovic (@BoraZ)for pointing me in the direction of the blog entry noted above. 


@bakercom1 Killer Patents http://bit.ly/drItSw  If you think patents are bad in computer technology, look at what they do in medicine. by @sjvn

@billschrier Sometime this month, the 5 billionth device will plug into the Internet - in 10 years there will be 20 billion - http://bit.ly/bbmqB1 

@bonnerj Great post on using infographics for teaching science and health, with a great curated list of infographics http://nyti.ms/cxilth 

@DaveHancockMLA Challenge-engage educators + students to create quality, commitment, results + relevance for today's world + future #abed # ableg Emerge2010

@dgmacarthur UC Berkeley legal decision could affect return of genetic results to research subjects: http://bit.ly/dqy6XY 

@DBast I have better access to academic journals as a University alumnus than through #GoC. From knowledge student -> Knowledge worker w/o tools

@Duncande Makes me crazy! Is DNA responsible for the creative nutcase? - "Creative mMadness" The Scientist - http://t.co/BiHSPAC

@edyong209 Genes and culture: OXTR gene influences social behaviour differently in Americans and Koreans http://bit.ly/a7iSeV

@GenomeBiology Wheat genome made available today. Congratulations to Neil Hall and team http://bbc.in/bKpHiz #openaccess

@Imparo Social media could be civic election game-changer http://t.co/WKYu1i8  #yycvote

 @idtdna Gene map opens way for more apple varieties http://ow.ly/2vSmv  #sequencing #DNA #genome

@Intersection_ Updated List of Policy Fellowships For Scientists & Engineers http://t.co/lDetb6e 

@LIFECorporation Life Technologies Announces Agreement to Acquire Ion Torrent http://bit.ly/cIzfmq 

@_modscientist_ Hey @_Lavaland_, i'm playing with your DNA today! You're gonna help me optimize SNP genotyping by RTpcr

@MyThum More than 100 million active users currently access Facebook through their mobile phones

@pearlf  Cambridge-based PatientsLikeMe now has over 45,000 patients on its social networking site, patient communities, http://bit.ly/a9uiGL

@phylogenomics Key issue: genome and metagenome data is not very useful without metadata about samples, methods, etc #HMP2010

To save you a little time in trying to figure out who is really behind all these postings, we always provide you with crib notes to help you out:

@bakercom1  Pam Baker is a prolific and popular freelance journalist and author. Her work appears in leading print and online publications around the globe. Find out more about her at http://www.netpress.org/ipg-membership-directory/pambaker

@billschrier Bill Schrier is the CTO / CIO for City of Seattle, interested in using tech in government, building stuff, politics, bicycling

@bonnerj  Joe Bonner is Director of Communications and Public Affairs at Rockefeller University. PIO, science writer and media relations guy. http://newswire.rockefeller.edu/

@DaveHancockMLA  Dave Hancock is Minister of Education for Alberta. http://www.davehancock.ca/

@dgmacarthur  aka Daniel  Macarthur who blogs on things genetic at http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/ 

@DBast is Doug Bastien from Ottawa. He works in the public service,  and says he is alson a sophist, technologist, digital enthusiast, deconstructivist, debureaucratist, change management entrepreneur and twitterer. He has a blog at http://blog.dbast.com/

@Duncande David Ewing Duncan is a journalist, broadcaster, Director of the Center for Life Science Policy, UC Berkeley and author. His latest book is the Experimental Man www.experimentalman.com 

@edyong209 Ed Yong is science writer & blogger at Not Exactly Rocket Science and  freelance journalist living in London, England.

@GenomeBiology  Genome Biology publishes articles from the full spectrum of biology. Their first conference, Beyond the Genome is in October 2010

@Imparo Troy Wason is a social media professional in the Calgary firm, WMS Communications Inc.

@idtdna is the company account for Integrated DNA Technologies in Iowa

@Intersection_  is The Discover Magazine blog written by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, authors of Unscientific America, the Republican War on Science, and other works

@LIFECorporation Life Technologies is a global biotechnolgy tools company at http://www.lifetechnologies.com/home.html

@_modscientist_ is based in the Seattle and likes to keep a low profile by saying he or she is a triple threat - A immunogenetics post-doc

@MyThum is a North American Mobile Agency in Toronto providing mobile expertise http://www.mythum.com/

@pearlf Pearl Freier is based in Cambridge, Mass and is founder of Founder of Cambridge BioPartners

@phylogenomics Jonathan Eisen is an evolutionary biologist, microbiology & genomics researcher, open science advocate, and professor at UC Davis