There’s a new twitter module in the sidebar of this blog. The module displays my most recent tweets and provides a link for anyone who’d like to follow me. My tweets will be devoted primarily to short descriptions of, and links to, newly released court decisions of interest to business lawyers and other professionals.
For some time I’ve been following the twitter phenomenon from afar, with a special interest in how it’s being used by lawyers. The overwhelming majority of what I see strikes me as piffle, although, according to everything I read in the blogosphere, I’m missing the point of social media. Clueless though I may be, I pledge not to tweet about my lunch-time tuna fish sandwich or pass on platitudes about life lessons lifted from Bartlett’s Quotations.
On the other hand, I’ve become convinced that the immediacy, format and accessibility of twitter, if used intelligently, can serve a highly useful purpose. Effective tweeting for professionals, like effective blogging, is about adding value. For many years I’ve regularly scanned the online decisions posted daily by the New York courts during the week. I also follow numerous law blogs and other secondary legal resources. If I can filter, interpret and repackage some of that information to make it more readily available to others, that’s value added.
So I encourage you to follow me on twitter if you’d like any easy way to keep abreast of breaking decisions — but not if you’re looking for piffle.