Over the past month I have returned to Twitter. Previously I had been using Jaiku, mainly because of their channel feature. But with so many of my colleagues using Twitter, it was time to make the switch.

I have been amazed at the value Twitter has provided for me professionally. The one thing I didn’t expect was how it creates social capital and strengthens the relationships I have with my professional peers. I’ve learned more about people in a month of following them on Twitter than I have in years of following their blogs. Twitter really lets me see the human side of people that I don’t necessarily see from blogs and other social media.

I am now thinking about how Twitter might be used to augment our student blogging efforts. Our main goal with our student blogs is to give prospective students an authentic view of life at our university. These blogs work best when students identify with the bloggers at a personal level. Twitter can do this better than traditional blogs. So I’m thinking of asking our bloggers to use Twitter as well. Their tweets would have to be relevant for prospective students, but I see great potential.

One challenge is that not many high school students are using Twitter, but I expect that will change. In the meantime I can pull the RSS feed from Twitter directly on to the individual student blogs.

So what do you think? Is using Twitter to augment student blogs a good idea?