I joined Twitter just over a year ago, after the early-adopters but before the masses. Connecting with professionals and college media gurus online opened up a world of things for me to read and learn.

It’s also changed how I do journalism. I’ve used Twitter to livetweet a presidential debate; update students at UNC during a bomb hoax; provide instant updates from a court appearance for six men charged with murder; and gather story ideas. Part of dailytarheel.com’s redesign process has included gathering feedback from Twitter followers.

Twitter’s invaluable, and if you don’t like it you probably don’t use it enough. There are people out there tweeting what they had for lunch, but if that’s all their feed offers, I don’t follow them. There’s more to Twitter: If you focus the community of people you follow on those with like interests and thoughtful updates, it’s worth the time and effort.