Twitter as Global Office Hours

Patrick Iber has a piece in Inside Higher Ed about the benefits of academics using Twitter. I've blogged about this quite a bit, but had not thought of how, as he quotes Princeton historian Kevin Kruse, that it is like having "global office hours." I love that notion because it's accurate. I talk all the time to people from all over the world about Latin American issues.

He has some good suggestions. I disagree a bit about all the things he says you should not do (years ago I wrote a post saying the main rule of academic blogging was not to follow any rules). Twitter is mostly anarchic, which is one reason it's so fun, so my advice is to be yourself. If you're a jerk, Twitter will eat you up, and you will deserve it. Mike Allison writes that if you're a jerk, you won't enjoy it anyway, which is true.

Finally he says it's important not to be on Twitter all the time. I've actually never tested that rule.