I have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Foursquare, Google+, Spotify, Turntable.fm, Bonfyre and Pinterest accounts. Although I’ll be the first to admit that my online social life may be slightly excessive, I doubt my experience is uncommon.

Joe Paterno died on Sunday morning. There is a chance, however, that you heard about it on Saturday night, when many news organizations reported that Paterno had died many hours before he actually did. The original report came from Onward State, Pennsylvania State University’s independent student news blog, which tweeted the erroneous information.

A recent StudLife column entitled, “#washuproblem? Get over it,” stirred up much criticism among Wash. U. students who have understandably taken a liking to this student-created Twitter/Facebook craze.

Before I came back to school, I went to see the New York Times documentary “Page One.” The standout figure of the film was columnist David Carr, whose gravelly-voiced, eloquent opinions about Twitter made it clear to me that my decision to join earlier this year didn’t mean I had “succumbed” to tweeting.

Last week, the rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt was toppled. In 2003, Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship that had lasted since 1979 ended. But there’s a distinct difference between these two changes of power. One was done with weapons and soldiers, the other with tweets and posts.

St. Louis was pummeled by snow last week, and Fake Chancellor Wrighton tweeted, no doubt from the comfort of a leather armchair, “I love taking snow days! Sucks for the rest of you.” Students weren’t bitter. In fact, they re-tweeted it. Of course, even if they had been upset, to whom would they have directed their anger? Fake Wrighton is, well, a fake.

A Washington University professor is being sued by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey over the patent rights to Square, a device that Time Magazine heralded as among the top 50 inventions of 2010.

Jeff Smith is tweeting. From prison. Well, technically he is e-mailing his tweets to a former aide to post on his behalf, but close enough. This 134-character announcement is a fairly typical example of the jail posts released by JeffSmith7037 thus far: “got elbowed in the paint today on b-ball court, t-shirt bloody, had to tell guard asap to make sure i don’t get in trouble 4 fighting.”

For those who have been living under a rock for the past few years, Twitter is a social networking forum that allows people to set up micro-blogs and track each other as they go about their lives.

Poking and tweeting just turned academic. Networking sites are becoming an essential tool for the tech-savvy professor or administrator on campuses across the nation. Washington University is no exception.