Shawn Vecellio
Clint McDuffie
OBAC MMI 140
25 January 2015
Tweeting Is Not Just For Birds Anymore In February of 2006, a web service created in a small apartment by a few web developers, would forever change the way people could connect on social media. Twitter was developed when the founders of Odeo, a podcast website, realized that podcasts would not be the “wave of the future.” Instead, they realized that social media was all about status (Carlson). What could be easier than texting your thoughts to one number and it would then be broadcast to all your friends and family? Thanks to Evan Williams, Noah Glass and Jack Dorsey, Twitter users could do just that. Hopefully, Twitter users will understand the positive and negative ramifications of using a social media site to express one’s personal views. For those that may not be aware, Twitter is an online social networking site that enables its users to read and send “tweets,” which are messages limited to 140 characters (Carlson). One must be a registered user in order to send tweets. Celebrities as well as trending news can be easily followed on this site. Through this new avenue of communication, users can follow friends and family and can add their personal insight to how the top news stories are directly affecting them. Twitter has somewhat of its own language that is easily understood and is user friendly. The “hash tag” is now a very popular means of communication in which key words or phrases are used and can link you into the site with similar topics or themes.
Twitter will allow its users to blog, discuss, advertise, ask questions, and give up to the minute statuses on one’s activities. The discussion, advertising, and getting help portions of Twitter can be quite useful for a business looking to grow or for someone needing knowledge on a subject. It can also be quite useful on staying up to date on current news or issues that are affecting people one communicates with on a regular basis in their feeds (Campbell, Martin, and Fabos). If a particular story peaks one’s interest, the hash tag can easily direct them to a site that will give more insight on the subject.
The negative portion of knowing what people are doing every second is that one may read things that are better left unsaid like bodily functions, racial issues, or illegal