Thursday, April 9, 2009

Tweeting around the world

James Cavanah
DTC 375
Dr. Farman
Word 807


Twitter has been an epidemic sweeping the nation for the last two years and with its popularity reaching to over 6 million users, it could be here for a while. But why do we use it? Is it the immediacy in that, we get instant answers or is it because we can be our own editors of news? I believe we use twitter for the simple reason, it communicates what we are doing in the fastest possible way. We Decide what we want to say or what feeling we want to convey in 140 short characteristics. The use of twitter I believe has direct correlation to hand written letters, pagers, texts messaging or a phone calls.. It helps people feel connected to the energy of the community that’s building the social web.

“It’s the messaging system that we didn’t know we needed until we had it”. This is what Biz Stone the co-founder of twitter said in an interview. When we go back in history we can see that technology only moves as fast as the people using it. For example the emergence of the printing press, telegraph and computers, these are all a remediation of each other. Twitter has distinctive characteristics between its previous predecessors. Not only can we sum up the thoughts and messages we are trying to say but it also gives immediate satisfaction with a real time network. People can go to twitter and find out the status of who ever they want and even become there own authors by writing about other peoples posts. For instance there are a ton of famous people on twitter such as Tony Hawk, Shaq, Pdiddy and so forth. They all have the option to put information out there that is used to defend him or herself from bad media or vise versa. We also see that more and more news medias are tweeting to get their viewers opinions. Twitter has defiantly changed the definition of the word “Author”, by giving the user a voice. Most people love the fact that they can agree or disagree with statements made on the website because it creates a relationship between the technology and the user, giving them freedom and power.

People are staying connected through Tweets all over the world. Users who tweet can stay connected with their families or friends and actually feel like there closer to them. In some ways it gives us a visual perception of what the other person is doing which makes us feel like we are connected. This idea also builds on the websites popularity with the incorporation of mobile phone. Not only can we give and receive tweets from our home computers but we can also send them with our phones. No other type of media has branched out to use more than one communication device, which I feel makes twitter one of a kind. In the article “ How to be a better tweeter” on Cnet.com they say that “I now realize that people on Twitter don't want to just hear what others have to say, they want to be heard. And the best way to satisfy that desire is to reply to their interesting tweets.” Having our mobiles connected to other people all to time creates an ambient intimacy. From one of our readings on Disambiguity.com we were introduced to this term . Ambient intimacy is the idea about “ being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible” . Having the technology to use a network like twitter creates a cultural/social bonding that will expand more and more social networking cites out to the public.

Having used twitter for the last month has gave me a good Idea of who my classmates are. At first I didn’t really get the idea of twitter and how people could “really” get to know there followers but that is half the fun of it. I decided that twitter takes a while to get used to but it is defanitly a social netwroking experience. The fact that you have to decide what to say in 140 charicteristics almost makes your post more personal than a handwrittenletter . When you leave an updates it feels like you have to cut out all the fluff and make well thought out statements to convey the message you want. Twitter is fast and effective and gives people the chance to keep there day intresting Not only do we have friends to talk to but know we have Twitter.


Works cited:

Reisinger, Don.Http://www.Cnet.com "How to be a better tweeter." 102/03/2009 1. 6 Apr 2009. http://news.cnet.com/how-to-be-a-better-tweeter/

Reichelt, Leisa. "Ambient Intimacy." Disambiguity.com 03/01/2007 1. 6 Apr 2009.http://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy/

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