Geneabloggers

"Twitter is a social network used by millions of people, and thousands more are signing up every day to send short messages to groups of friends. But where's the user manual for Twitter? Where do new Twitter users go to learn about Tweeting, retweets, hashtags and customizing your Twitter profile? Where do you go if you want to know all about building a community on Twitter, or using Twitter for business? How can you find advanced tools for using Twitter on your phone or your desktop? To answer all these questions and more, we've assembled The Twitter Guide Book, a complete collection of resources for mastering Twitter. Happy Tweeting!"

Ever wonder why people use "#" in their tweets on Twitter? Do you want to know what a specific hash tag like #surnames or #brickwall means? Learn how to use hash tags and then leverage their power through searching and analytics.

Is this just another mis-step by Facebook? Or is it another attempt at holding on to user content even after they've left this earth? One person's recent experience with trying to remove her brother's home page and delete his account turned into a nightmare.

Did you ever wonder why you might want to shorten your URLs when posting comments, or creating your own blog post? Most people think URL trimming is for Twitter (with its 140 character limit) but did you know you can track the number of hits for your links and more with these URL shortening services?

In an earlier entry, this column reported on several resources available for online African-American research in Virginia. Many more resources are now available, some becoming so just in the past three months since that report, necessitating another visit to the subject.

Do you have a favorite few genealogy blogs that you read regularly? Maybe the blogger offers excellent genealogy advice, insightful analysis or a unique point of view. Or the writing especially creative or humorous.\n\nIf so, we want to know about it. In the May 2010 issue, we'll be naming the Family Tree Magazine 40 Best Genealogy Blogs ("Family Tree 40" for short).\n\nFirst, we're asking the genealogy community to nominate the genealogy blogs they read most. Later, family historians will vote on their favorite blogs in several categories.

With all the buzz about Twitter being the latest source for breaking news, it may be easy to overlook the fact that Twitter is also a good place to look for information about the past.