Once the realm of celebrities and their , academics are taking to Twitter: scholars now use the popular microblogging site, according to some sources.

While scholarly chat and self-promotion abounds, Twitter also acts as a virtual water cooler, a place where academics go to build community, have some fun, and let off steam.

A short year has passed since I first delved into Twitter, using the handle to explore the lighter side of higher education. It has been a lot of fun, and I shall no doubt be devoting a chapter to the joys, and oddities, of the academic Twittersphere in the (crowdfunding now!).

Hashtags, used to collate tweets on a particular subject, are great for community building, with regulars such as , ?and providing opportunities for academics to interact with and learn from each other. Others, such as and , are a little more light-hearted, building communities around extra-curricular interests.

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The recently coined is encouraging academics to take time away from work, and a quick skim through reveals that we are an active bunch.

Particularly amusing (and distracting) are hashtag games, whereby people offer up their best humour in response to a challenge posed in a hashtag. , , and are among my favourites.

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Is that all you've published?

¡ª Bilby Summerhill (@BilbySummerhill)

The first rule of Nature is you don't publish in Nature

¡ª Jon Tennant (@Protohedgehog)

A handful of excellent accounts dedicated to dishing out academic humour have become staples of the academic Twittersphere.

, an account making pithy remarks about academic life, garnered more than 100,000 followers before its author, , decided to take a well-earned sabbatical. , a decidedly hard-to-pigeon-hole mixture of snark, sarcasm, and philosophy, has become (in)famous for its short and sharp quips on everything from current affairs to language. Its author, Eric Jarosinski, was formerly a professor of German at an Ivy League university, but is now dedicated full time to the project.

I do my best proofreading after I hit send.

¡ª Shit Academics Say (@AcademicsSay)

If you need me, I'll be wondering why. Then how. Then for how much longer.

¡ª Nein. (@NeinQuarterly)

pokes fun at the traditional academic publishing model, while others, like , dig into the publishing process itself.

Elsevier's new sharing policy allows you to verbally explain your scholarly work to badgers and other woodland creatures.

¡ª Fake Elsevier (@FakeElsevier)

¡°I am afraid this manuscript may contribute not so much towards the field¡¯s advancement as much as toward its eventual demise.¡±

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¡ª ShitMyReviewersSay (@YourPaperSucks)

?Even the Oxford Comma, of which I am a strident advocate, has its own account.

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Dear world, Feel free to use me. Sincerely, Oxford Comma

¡ª Oxford Comma (@IAmOxfordComma)

?If these people (and anthropomorphised punctuation) represent the best of academic Twitter, the now-defunct @GradElitism represented the worst of it.

The account had managed to attract almost 40,000 followers by reposting others¡¯ jokes without attribution (ie, plagiarising). A sprang into action, calling out the plagiarism and getting the offending account shut down in a matter of weeks. This brief campaign was no doubt buoyed by the that Twitter is clamping down on ¡°joke theft¡±.

During the early days of my foray into Twitter, I noticed that one of my followers would often retweet things he ¡°overheard¡± from students on Twitter. Students indeed say the funniest things, apparently unaware or unconcerned of the highly public nature of their musings, so we started a dedicated .

Occasionally more amusing or concerning than students own ramblings are some of the things they quote their professors as saying:

Things my professor says: "I drink like a fish. I can drink you all under the table!" (with the straightest face ever)

¡ª Gina C. (@ginamc)

Papers should be like a woman's skirt. Short enough to be interesting but long enough to cover the subject. -My Anthropology professor

¡ª Ali Grow (@ajgrow)

My music professor makes us stay after class and play twister with him to make up attendance. Dead serious. I find a problem with this, no?

¡ª Hailey Beesley (@HaileyBeez11)

Finally, there are some dark corners of academic Twitter that don¡¯t make any sense to me at all. The profile of one looks like any other student Twitter page, yet posts nothing but a never-ending stream of tweets advertising university courses (about one every 5 minutes, over 300,000 in total).

She is then instantly retweeted by 20-100 similarly baffling accounts. Clearly this is all automated, but by whom and to what end remains unclear to me. Answers on a postcard.

The academic Twittersphere is a big place ¨C sadly I couldn¡¯t mention all my favourites. If you want to spice up your timeline, you can check out my lists of and other .

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Glen Wright blogs at??and tweets at?. His book is?.