I am using thing no. 7 (Twitter) and thing no.8 (Facebook) of #23things to note some reflections on how I use social media. This is about my individual professional or personal use, rather than any organisational perspective.
So, starting with Facebook, I find I have little to share. I am a reluctant Facebook user, strictly using it for personal relationships with far flung friends and for keeping in touch. Reviewing my Facebook timeline since I joined in 2007 reveals three clear trends: I post about the weather, the weekend and my cat. You could probably write a programme to auto-compose posts for my timeline and no one would know the difference.
Over the past two years I have also had to use Facebook for a project, more reluctantly still, and I have to admit that I have a lot to learn if I ever want to leverage that network for my professional aims. Moving on…
Twitter I joined a few years and 3k+ tweets ago – to provide holiday cover for someone who was travelling. It took me some time to get the hang of it, but since then it’s become a most useful space for me and I would echo many of the observations made by other participants in their posts about how valuable it can 
be. It’s easy to forget how few people in general are using it however and I find it irritating at times when media becomes to referential to what people have tweeted instead of finding other sources. Last year I installed Martin Hawksey’s TAGS twitter archive (read more about how to make your own) and ever since then I have been happily archiving my tweets and conversations. This is actually the first time I have had a look at the “top hashtags” in my own little universe of tweets and while it’s predictable to me it’s also interesting and useful and will probably be more so over time. I like tweeting about my own work as well as interesting or useful things I come across, but there is always a lot more on Twitter than I can follow. I dip in and out and enjoy the random things I find. Unless I am at an event I rarely tweet at high volume and I have plenty of days when I don’t use it at all. There isn’t always something to say.