Intellectual Property Law

Using Twitter for Legal Updates

By Michael Scott

Twitter.com is a service that lets people send short messages (140 characters or less) (called “tweets”) to those who decide to “follow” them, and to receive short messages from those they choose to follow. While Twitter.com is used both for social networking and for business communications, it can also be an effective way to get real-time updates on new legal developments.

You can set up Twitter on your computer at work, or at home. I personally use an application called “Twhirl” which just sits on my desktop and receives “tweets” in real time, but there are other services as well.

More important for a lawyer, you can set up Twitter on your cellphone or PDA to receive “tweets” even when you are not in front of your computer. There are three legal microblogging services that have started on Twitter (and that I contribute to), which you may find of interest:

Internet Law microblog
Copyright Law microblog
Privacy Law microblog

Each of these microblogs sends short tweets on new developments in their area of law. Each tweet contains a short blurb and a link. There are generally no more than 3-5 tweets per day, so it shouldn’t overwhelm you with messages.

If you think one or more of these microblogs might be useful in your practice, just join Twitter.com and go to any or all of the links above and click on “follow”. It’s that simple.

Full post as published by Singularity on May 12, 2008 (boomark / email).