Twittastic: Why You Should Be Using Twitter
Alex Baker
September 21, 2009
Filed under A & E, Opinions and Views, Student Life
What are you doing? Twitter asks this simple, yet deceivingly flexible, question to millions of users every day. It does not matter if said question is answered philosophically, humorously, or simply with meaningless chitchat, as long as it is answered in 140 characters or less.
Twitter is a free micro-blogging and social networking site created by Jack Dorsey in 2006. Dorsey twisted and shaped the idea for the website based on the simple desire to know what his friends were doing. The website was founded on the fundamental “need” of today’s generation to be constantly connected to everyone else.
Growing at a monthly rate of 1, 382 percent, Twitter has quickly become the fastest growing social networking site in the world.
Twitter can be described as Facebook minus, to be honest, almost everything. The website has the sort of modern-day, clean look that attracts users who are unhappy with the distraction that other social networking sites have come to acquire. This uncluttered feeling is what attracted Greg Shuford to the micro-blogging website. Greg often feels overwhelmed by the Facebook news feed saying “All of the highlights and comments on Facebook are really distracting most of the time, especially the stupid quizzes that people do all of the time. Twitter only shows status updates and I think this is refreshingly simplistic.”
A typical Twitter profile.
Twitter is social networking at its easiest and, on the website, your home page revolves around the users that you follow. When the users you follow update their statuses, or tweet, it then appears on your home page immediately. Other users can also follow you on Twitter and they automatically receive your tweets on their home page. Avid Twitter user, Elizabeth Towles, enjoys the diversity of Twitter users and follows 144 different twitterers, including bands, clothing companies, and pop culture icons.
There are several million twitterers and this includes celebrities, who often tweet in between photo shoots, backstage at shows, etc. Following these celebrities can be very interesting and, often times, their tweets provide an insight into the celebrities’ lives that could not be obtained otherwise. Musicians often use the website to inform their followers of upcoming CD releases and concerts. Stores such as Urban Outfitters and American Apparel often offer coupons that are only available for one day on Twitter. There are even politicians that tweet, including President Obama. Obama’s campaign often utilizes the website to inform followers of upcoming speeches and rallies; this was especially true during the presidential primaries and elections.
Twitter offers several unique features and one of the newest features are the trending topics. Trending topics are updated in real time and they are a list of the top ten most tweeted topics of that moment. Trending topics can be tagged by typing in the subject without any spaces and putting a pound symbol in front of the subject. This is called hash tagging. For example, after the incident between Kanye West and Taylor Swift at the VMAs, several trending topics were dedicated to some form of #kanyeisajerk.
Another feature of Twitter allows you to direct a tweet at specific user while still being visible to all of your followers. This is done by typing the user’s username preceded by an @ symbol. An example of this sort of tagging would be “I got a bunch of cool new clothes from @urbanoutfitters,” or “@woot has a really good deal today.” This feature has recently been adopted by Facebook, showing that Twitter is making a significant impact on the social networking community.
The "fail whale" that appears if Twitter is experiencing a problem.
If you love the pictures and videos offered on Facebook and the lack of these features on Twitter is keeping you away, then there is a solution to your dilemma. Twiddeo.com and twitpic.com are websites that allow you to post tweets with links to your videos and pictures. It is obvious that you can upload these pictures and videos from your computer, but it is also possible to upload them from your cell phone.
One of the coolest features of Twitter is the ability to receive the tweets of the people you follow on your cell phone in the form of a text message. This allows you to update your Twitter anytime and anywhere. This is an optional feature that can repeatedly be turned on and off whenever the user desires. But in the case of this feature, it is user beware because if you do not have an unlimited texting plan, the constant text messages can become rather costly.
Twitter is the fastest growing social networking website on the Internet and this fact can attributed to the simplistic, yet versatile, design of the site. I have had a Twitter account for several months and I tweet almost every day. Tweeting is an uncomplicated way to say what is on your mind and, because of all of its features, it is every bit as useful as other social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace.
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great article, good points.
you are my hero for writing this.
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I am still confused about the purpose of twitter. It is facebook, minus everything cool. It is like choosing to ride in a rowboat instead of a yacht. If you dislike aspects of facebook, they can easily be disabled.
I should probably be doing my homework instead of writing comments. I still have like 5 more hours of work. I’m gonna be up all night!
[Reply]
if by cool you mean garbage, fred, then you are correct.
It takes the usefulness of facebook and puts it in a logical, uncluttered format.
the yacht is getting crowded, untidy, and hard to manage.
btw, here’s a simple analogy you might understand:
myspace:facebook::facebook:twitter
one day we’ll realize that the games, groups, events, and other apps can be better managed through specialized sites that can be integrated with twitter.
and we’ll shed these things like we shed the annoying layouts, music players, blogs, and html commenting all on myspace we thought we couldn’t live without.
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