Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Just over a month ago, inspired by all the things we heard at Webstock, Te Ara joined Twitter. Some of you have already found us there. If you haven’t you can check us out at: http://twitter.com/Te_Ara.

Twitter, for the uninitiated, is a forum for micro-blogging. Each ‘tweet’, or post, is a maximum of 140 characters. You can follow other ‘twitterers’ and other twitterers can follow you.

If you haven’t tried Twitter (as I hadn’t) you possibly think it’s a bunch of attention-deficient people telling each other mundane facts about their lives (as I did). And I’m sure that’s sometimes true (as this video suggests).

But it can also be a way of making connections, learning about new cool things, and letting other people know about cool things – and all in a minimal amount of time. Because tweets are so short, they take hardly any time to write or read.

What is Te Ara doing on Twitter?

Te Ara’s Twitter account is managed by Heath, our lead designer. A few times a day he tweets things like:

• interesting facts
• links to weird and wonderful pictures, videos or other resources
• links to new blog posts
• behind the scenes goings-on at Te Ara
• links to Te Ara content related to news stories
• replies to other twitterers
• other random things we think might be of interest.

So how’s it going?

Very well, thank you. We’ve found a community of people to talk with, and a bunch of other cultural organisations to hang out with, such as:

• NZHistory.net.nz
• NZLive.com
• The National Library of New Zealand
• Te Papa
• NZ On Screen
• The Big Idea
• Brooklyn Museum
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Good company to find ourselves in, don’t you think?