The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project reports on Twitter users. According to the report, 8% percent of the American adults who use the internet are Twitter users. Some of the groups who are notable for their relatively high levels of Twitter use include young adults, African-Americans and Latinos, and urbanites. See the full report at http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Twitter-Update-2010.aspx.

The March 2010 TEDxNYED talk, “The New Volunteers: Social Media, Disaster Response And You,” was presented by Andy Carvin, Senior Strategist at NPR. In this talk, Andy gave an overview of the way the Internet and Social Media tools have changed over time to create a new set of tools and resources for responding to disasters. See http://acarvin.posterous.com/video-of-my-tedxnyed-talk-the-new-volunteers.

Based on feedback provided from the Toolkit Usability Report, the NN/LM Emergency Preparedness & Response Toolkit now has a new look, with a “cleaner” presentation of content. New features have been added, including a section for EP&R related Twitter feeds, and easier access to weather alerts and warnings. There’s also a new tutorial on how to navigate the toolkit.

On the upper right of our web page is the “Add This” social bookmarking widget. It allows you to share our NewsBits and Latitudes articles on popular social networking sites — or any other web sites — such as Facebook and Twitter. Just click on the button and choose from a list of popular services.

Are you curious about the social media policies of other institutions? Take a look at the growing list at HLWIKI:

http://hlwiki.slais.ubc.ca/index.php/Social_media_policies

It includes links to policies for health care institutions.

Check out all of the ways that you can communicate with NLM using social networking services like Facebook and Twitter on NLM’s “Follow, Fan and Connect with NLM” page: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/socialmedia/index.html.

The page includes Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, and e-mail lists.

The National Library of Medicine has launched a Facebook fan page. The goal of the new page is to share news, information, fun facts and important links with interested readers.

To become a fan, log in to your Facebook account and type “National Library of Medicine” in the search box. For more information, see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/facebook_nlm.html.

Have you thought about using Twitter to engage the audience during a presentation? If so, you may wish to download a free, online book on how to use Twitter in presentations. The book discusses benefits in using Twitter in your presentations. Sections include how to “survive the experience” and how to respond to the audience. To download, see http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=433746.

Two new online services have made the news lately:  Google Buzz and Foursquare.

Google Buzz is a good example of why it’s not always a good idea to immediately go out and try a new service.  Give it a week and let the “dust settle.”

At first, Google Buzz seemed like a great idea:  Facebook-like interaction with your contacts integrated directly into Gmail.  Unfortunately, reports of privacy issues and too many “automatic” features began almost immediately.  For instance, users reported that all their Gmail contacts were now public for everyone to see.  Google has now been forced to admit it made a mistake and to try to fix the system.  See this blog post entitled, “Google: We Screwed Up with Buzz, Stay Tuned” for a summary.

Meanwhile, a mobile service called “Foursquare” has been getting a lot of attention. Foursquare is a “geo-location” app for mobile phones.  People can share their location with their friends and offer “tips” about particular places in their city.  The Krafty Librarian has an interesting post about the service and whether it has any application to libraries.  For now, it appears to be mostly a “fun” application but it’s worth keeping an eye on for future library applications.

Keep up with hospitals that are participating in social networking with the “HospitalGroup” Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/hospitalgroup.