By KATHLEEN BITTER
With 241 million monthly active users, Twitter provides celebrities, politicians and news organizations with audiences in the thousands to receive updates on everything from the latest global news to what a pop star just ate for lunch. Professional scientists also use Twitter as a way of communicating with their colleagues and reaching out to people interested in learning more about their area of expertise. Well-known science educators Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye each have over one million followers. This week in Science we ask Cornell professors with active Twitter accounts what made them decide to join, what keeps them tweeting, and whether they think Twitter is useful for science education, communication and outreach.
Why did you join Twitter? Was it originally for science outreach purposes?
I joined Twitter to be more often in touch with a larger number of scientists in the research community.
– Prof. Alon Keinan, biological statistics and computational biology
Prof. Alon Keinan