Birthdays are a great thing to blog about. We’ve written birthday posts on Shakespeare, THOMAS, a queen, the new year, and, yes, this blog. It was one year ago today that I blogged about the launching of the @THOMASdotgov Twitter account.
Over the year, we have shared over 1,500 tweets about legislation in THOMAS and various others concerning the U.S. Congress with a growing number of people. There are more than 10,000 followers. (That’s just a few more than the three that appear in the screen shot below!) This is also a huge increase over our first Twitter account, @LawLibCongress, which had just over 2,500 followers when I blogged about it after its first year. The @LawLibCongress account has had its own growth spurt, since then, and is nearing 25,000 followers.
Throughout the year, we have continued to improve and refine our tweets and increase the venues in which they appear. One major modification to THOMAS was the addition of @THOMASdotgov Twitter stream to the homepage. That change received attention from Library Journal and ReadWriteWeb, which had previously mentioned the account.
In addition to tweeting about bills and votes, in January we–and by we, I mean primarily Meg–started tweeting about the House Committee Hearings that you can now watch on THOMAS. Meg recently posted an update on her experience tweeting the hearings. It has been great to watch House Committees retweet the @THOMASdotgov account.
To celebrate, I thought I would add a bonus pic this week. Twitter has also changed this year. Here’s what Twitter looked like around this time last year:
I think Twitter is an excellent tool for staying connected to Congress; and I am thrilled to play a part in helping others stay connected too. How do you think we’re doing?