Pros:
– You get to see it mentioned on almost every major online news source (NYTimes, FT, BBC, Washington Post, CNN, NBC, CBC, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, Businessweek, FastCompany, Huffington Post, SFGate, The Daily Beast, Slate…), almost every major tech source (TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Arstechnica, CNET, PCMagazine…) and some cool ones like Nature’s blog, the Chronicle of Higher Education and Wikipedia!
– You meet a great group of people.
– Long-lost friends and acquaintances get in touch.
– You get a better understanding of how journalism works.
Cons:
– You get a better understanding of how journalism works (just joking!).
– It really screws with the results that appear if someone googles you. I have done more things than coin a hashtag, people.
– You get almost no sleep for several days.
I alluded to this before: I have a lot of things depending on me that are not this. I’m not the one to carry on the fight, though I may post from time to time about it.
Finally: tweeting can’t be the end, but it’s a very good start. Apart from the arguments previously posted, there’s a behavioural economics literature that says that when people commit to something publicly, they are more likely to do it. I hope the tens of thousands of people who tweeted about #pdftribute continue to feel a connection to the movement, keep sharing their papers and keep pressing the system to change.
(NB: Since there might also be an “I already did my part” effect, the effects of tweeting could in principle go either way, but that’s my bet.)