adrianan.essay4

Adriana Naccarato

Dr. Farman

DTC 375

4-9-09

wc: 792

I’ve been Twitter-fied!

I am definitely a social butterfly to the fullest. I adore being able to let my friends, family, and peers know what I am doing at all times. Twitter is the best place to do so. There is unlimited ease of doing so on Twitter without the hassle of friend requests or pointless applications that clutter Facebook and MySpace. Twitter is easy, convenient and can be used by all, anywhere, everywhere, anytime, and as often as your heart desires.

Twitter is a privately funded startup with offices in the SoMA neighborhood of San Francisco, CA. Started as a side project in March of 2006, Twitter has grown into a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices. Twitter is a form of micro-blogging that allows users to keep people updated of their status. You can update as many times as you want as often as humanly possible. Simplicity has played an important role in Twitter's success. People are eager to connect with other people and Twitter makes that simple. Twitter asks one question, "What are you doing?" Answers must be under 140 characters in length and can be sent via mobile texting, instant message, or the web (Twitter). The beauty is that it is continuous and linear. You can update as many times as you like in order to say as much or as little as you want. The beauty of Twitter is that you do it from your cell phone. You can update your status, as well as receive updates of other “tweeters”.

Sure we can do status updates on Facebook or MySpace, why Twitter? Good question, Twitter allows you the freedom to let people know what you are doing without the hassle of endless applications, games, or hassle of intricate designing of a creative page for people to navigate over. Twitter keeps it simple. This is refreshing to me. Don’t get me wrong, I find myself jumping from one social site to the other, but my sole purpose is to simply update my status.

Of course Twitter remediates older forms of communication. I believe everything is remediated. This is why and how we are able to grow as a civilization, socially and technologically. We start off with journals and diaries and work up to blogging and then before you know it we are micro-blogging. Micro-blogging has hit the forefront full force and seems to have everyone hopping on board. Micro-blogging is simply stated small talk digitalized on the web. People find this exhilarating and profound because these days most of our time is spent surfing the net or simply living online. Twitter can eliminate the frivolous chit-chat to specifics of “what we are doing”.

Not only do social butterflies, like me, find Twitter to be easily usable and accessible, so do journalists, celebrities, politicians, and businesses. I cannot even limit the use to just these few categories, everyone has the ability to try Twitter and, like us all, get hooked.

Journalists take people places that we cannot normally go. It’s informal and approachable and great for conveying a little moment from an event. For some, journalism is already getting smaller. Newspapers are shrinking. Serious news is being pushed aside in favor of entertainment and fluff stories. To many journalists and guardians of the trade, the idea that any journalist would willingly embrace a smaller space is horrifying and dumb. One journalism professor drew himself up to his full height and denounced Twitter journalism — or microjournalism, as someone unfortunately called it — as the ultimate absurd reduction of journalism. We can all agree that journalism shouldn’t get any smaller, but Twitter doesn’t threaten the traditions of our craft. It adds, rather than subtracts, from what we do (Dickerson).

There is absolutely EVERYTHING revolutionary about Twitter. It eliminates chaos and unncecessary clutter, it is perfect. No reader expects more from Twitter than it offers, and no one writing tries to shove more than necessary into a Twitter entry (Dickerson). With the ease and simplicity of Twitter, I do not think it could have been able to survive during any other era other than that of the digital.

Living in a a digital era, we look for the newest, coolest, more advanced forms or ways to communicate. With most of us juggling careers, school, families, and just the chaos of daily living, not only are we looking for the coolest, we want the simplest. Twitter has become a convenient way for people to give others a glimpse into the chaos. It is a fun and easy way to keep people enthralled in our lives. Twitter was never a thing of the past. Twitter is, and will remain a thing of the present, but even more so, the future!

WORKS CITED

“About Twitter”. Twitter 2009 April 2009. http://twitter.com/about

Dickerson, John. “Don’t Fear Twitter.” Nieman Reports. (Summer 2008).
http://www.denieuwereporter.nl/2008/08/dont-fear-twitter/