Twitter is a microblogging service, where users answer the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. Thanks to prominent Twitterers such as Barack Obama, Stephen Fry, and … umm… Darth Vader, Twitter has recently gained enormous media coverage. Obama used it for campaigning. Stephen Fry live-tweeted being stuck in a lift. Darth Vader does Thriller.

It’s fairly obvious that there’s a large amount of the wild and wacky on Twitter – as well as a fair amount of the frankly banal. Updates about meals/gym regimes/bedtimes may be scintillating stuff for your close circle of friends, but unless you have a particularly effulgent turn of phrase – or a dangerously exciting lifestyle – they aren’t going to thrill the twitosphere.

We’re all guilty of it. A look at my personal tweets will … well, you looked. However, it’s a bit different when you’re not tweeting for yourself. Tweeting on behalf of Copac means that I have a whole different audience, a different set of priorities. What will Copac users find interesting? What will they ignore with a yawn? And I’m finding it surprisingly difficult to do in that format.

The tweet, the microblog, is – like the Facebook status – an informal medium. It’s hard to be otherwise in 140 characters. Trying to be formal results in very stilted tweets, where the occasional (space-necessitated) contraction and web-speak glares and jars. If you’ve got this far, you’ve probably realised that formal isn’t really my style. And yet the point of the Copac Twitter account is to… is to…

Ah. I think we’ve found the root of my style problem. What is the point of the Copac Twitter account? Surely we’re not just doing it to be fashionably web 2.0. Are we doing it to inform people of Copac news? Yes, but we already have a news blog for that. Are we doing it to promote Copac developments? Yes, but we already have a development blog for that. Are we doing it to connect with our users and our peers? To get closer to the Copac community? Yes!

So there we are. We’ve found our audience. Now can you help us find our voice? What do you want Copac to tweet about? How do you want us to speak to you? Please let us know! You can contact us through the comments here, at the news blog, on our Twitter account, on our Facebook page,  by email, or phone. Or shine the Copac symbol from the top of a tall building on a dark and stormy night, and await the caped librarians…