You will probably heard on recent national news about social network systems like Facebook and Twitter. Twitter seems to be the latest craze and everyone appears be talking about 'Twittering' and sending 'Tweets'.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about (and I know there are 1 or 2 technophobes out there) then Twitter is a new social network system where individuals can send short 140 character messages (Tweets) to give an on the spot account of what they are doing at that moment - mostly boring stuff but some celebrities on Twitter.com already have a following of a few thousand.
I've just been reading (but not understanding) on BirdForum how this might relate to rarity reporting. The dream is a free service to compete with RBA and Birdnet, but I can't see that happening - it would be unmoderated for a start so Steller's Eider posts could be commonplace. Birders are, however, experimenting with national Twitter link called 'RareVine'.
Where it might be extremely useful is instant messaging between a group of friends, "just found a...", "still here" or "it's just flow high west so don't bother".
Also the idea has been picked up at a regional level. You might be interested to read http://twitter.com/birdneast
I don't know where any of this technology is going but best to keep abreast of the times
