Another Social Media Tool for GIS Coordination

Actually, this is not about a new social media tool. Rather, this is about a new aspect of twitter, which has seen a sharp increase in use among GIS coordinators and others who (let's be honest) like to stay obsessively in the loop.

This week, twitter opened up all users to the creation of lists, a tool that was introduced slowly over the previous weeks to a smaller subset of users. Lists allow users to create and curate collections of "like" twitter accounts. It is an expansion, and focusing, I think of the "following" behavior that makes twitter such an active spreader of information.

And this new way of using twitter is going to shake things up for a time, as users find ways to use it. As a start, we're seeing several professional organizations start to curate self-focused lists. Here at NSGIC, for example, we have started a list of State GIS Coordination tweeters.

Here are a few other lists we've found in the first hours of the list-creation period:

• NationalGroups (@Governing)
• geo-prof-orgs (@tinacary)
• geo-biz (@entchev)
• geotweets (@StevenFeldman)
• gis (@mapmaker)
  

This will be an interesting period. Even as I write this post, and poke around twitter for lists to list, things are changing. I expect that the "list of GIS lists" will change, continuously, over the next few days. So treat the list above as just a teaser.

We'll have to wait and see what the final collection of lists of lists will turn out to look like.