For me, ever since I joined Twitter last year, I have become so enthusiastic about our Space Shuttle Program. I try to Follow as many people and as many agencies that I can. I love learning about the technical aspects before/during a launch and landing. I know that if I have a question or that I don't understand something, I can Tweet someone. It is definitely a conversation starter when someone at work asks me what's going on lately at NASA or asking me about the present/upcoming mission, how does this/that work and/or what does this/that do. I am trying to do my part to get people I know interested in Space Exploration and why we need it in our lives --- present and future.   

What got me to the people/organizations/conversations that I participate in most often? My interests, both personal and work-related.

What value do they bring to me? Highly efficient focus on information and support for my specific needs. High signal/noise ratio.

What makes them appealing? They are always available, knowledgeable, supportive, useful and insightful. Never boring, a continuous opportunity for discovery.

A good example is a book by the New York Times columnist David Pogue "The World According To twitter." At a talk he gave, he experimented with the tweet "I need a cure for hiccups...right now." Within seconds, responses came from all over the world and were weird wonderful, funny. Twitter for me was a slow process of discovery. The initial people I followed on twitter were from the world of computer and internet tech that I found through a number of podcasts I listen to. Then I found NASA and related organizations. Finally one after another of STwP's. For me, the big value is finding the best that others bring up, such as links to space/science news, blogs, video, photo's and events. There is so much I now enjoy learning from twitter "leads" that I would never have time to discover on my own. An added benefit is with events such as a NASA rocket launch or news conference, there is always someone listening to live audio or watching a live blog and tweeting the key points. It gives me a connection during an event and later on, to what I would could easily miss otherwise.

Having worked in aerospace for many years, and also raising a computer science major, you'd have thought I would have embraced social media well before now.  However, being a single mom on a limited budget, I don't have a lot of free time or cash for high tech toys, like iPhones or even an iPod.  I'm pretty much relegated to my desktop, and have never felt inclined to join Facebook or Myspace.  That being said, when Mike Massimino tweeted an event while we were chatting, I figured, hey, it might be fun to follow to him on his STS-125 mission.  So I just lurked for awhile.  Sooner or later, though, I was intrigued by the questions people were asking and stumbled upon the Space Tweep Society blog.  I was amazed that the same questions, ones I'd known the answers to for years, were being asked over and over by interested people out there.  What an opportunity!  A way to talk, chat, converse and explore ideas, and share what we know, and continue to learn.  I was hooked.  I'd never imagined I would meet so many interesting people from every walk of life, and even further enhance relationships with people a building or two away that I may have otherwise never met.  Again, I always thought I'd be a holdout for that sort of communcation, but now I know I'll never go back.  It's been quite amazing for a me.

I first starting using Twitter a little over two years ago to follow a few Mac enthusiasts as a way to stay current in real time.  I wasn't tweeting actively, merely following.  One day I tweeted about a book on leadership I was reading at the time, and was tweeted back to share my thoughts on the book.  From there, I sought out and connected with others in the leadership field, such as CEOs, motivational speakers, and coaches.  Being a space professional, I figured, "why not branch out?" so I started following the professional NASA twitter streams such as @NASA, @MarsPhoenix, and others.  Shortly thereafter, I started following space enthusiasts, one of the first ones being @flyingjenny in the pre-Space Tweep Society days.  Jen and I share a passion for photography, so that led to other connections with combination space enthusiasts/photographers, to professional photographers, and on from there.  I've built an incredible community on Twitter, whom I call the people I'd like to get to know.  And I have - I've met incredible people in real life because of Twitter.

I started Facebook later and used that at first to keep tabs on my brothers.  For me, I focus Facebook on family, old friends from college, and a handful of Twitter followers.  My Facebook community is an order of magnitude smaller than my Twitter community, and is different; it's targeted mostly for the people I already know.