What Can You Expect To See On Twitter?
If you’re new to Twitter, you might not know what the buzz is about. Exactly what is Twitter and what can you expect to see there? How valuable is it to the regular person? There are many benefits to Twitter you might not expect, including support, breaking news, and connections of both a business and personal nature.
Not only is Twitter a micro-blogging platform for people to interact within 140 characters, it is a hotbed of information, breaking news, and plain, old-fashioned gossip. People from all walks of life populate Twitter, offering opinions and snippets from their lives to which other people can relate. Twitter can alleviate boredom, inform, and unite in a way that is unprecedented. Twitter is very similar to the beginnings of IRC or AOL chat, but it connects people in a way that is unique.
If you’re a single mom and need information on schools in a new district, you can find someone who can help you find what you need. A student writing a paper for an important class can find people who can help find links to facts. Writers, crafters, artists, musicians, can build a following or join a group that shares similar interests. And breaking news often finds its way to Twitter before it even reaches the mainstream media.
How is this possible? The accessibility of Twitter is key, as is the large audience. Although it has proven difficult to get an accurate count of active Twitter users, most counts range to over 2.5 million Twitter users to date. That’s a lot of brains to pick, a lot of experience to tap, and a lot of information on which to draw. New applications for mobile phones make Twitter even more accessible, and often what happens on the street is recorded first on Twitter.
For instance, the Iranian election was followed closely on Twitter, and when the Iranian government tried to shut down information from that country, their efforts were stymied by witnesses able to access Twitter and communicate the events through words and pictures. The globe is not as tiny as it was before Twitter came on the scene.
Celebrity use by the famous such as Oprah, Ashton Kutcher, and Shaq O’Neill have also brought Twitter to major attention. People don’t want to feel isolated, and with the mobility of the American population and waning of local neighborhoods, Twitter has become an interesting substitute in many ways. Twitter even reaches across borders to bring opinions, news, and reflections from other cultures.
Although skeptics in the beginning thought Twitter was just a passing fad, since launched publicly in July of 2007, it has shown no signs of slowing down. It’s difficult to predict the future of any social networking phenomenon, but it will be interesting to see how Twitter evolves with its users and what the future holds in store.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by michael_duvall: #omgfacts What Can You Expect To See On Twitter? http://bit.ly/7f1Zed #beginner #twitter…
Great topic, I never new what to expect when I first went to twitter.
I agree, their was all this hype, then I created an account and did not know what to do next.
Great information in your post, I watched this report on the tv the other day about this same thing. Thanks for the post! I have bookmarked.