This article about Twitter will make you much aware of what it is and how it came to be what it is.
‘Tweet’ once used to be a weak chirping sound of a bird, but these days, thanks to ‘Twitter’, it has gained a new definition. A tweet is a message, with a maximum of 140 characters, displayed on the profile page of the author and is delivered to the author’s subscribers who are usually known as ‘followers’.
In simple layman terms, Twitter is a social networking site which provides its users a way to send and read messages, which as we already know as tweets, for free of cost. The users have the flexibility to send and receive the tweets via the twitter website, SMS (Short messaging service) or other external applications.
Created in 2006, Twitter, the brainchild of Jack Dorsey, has gained immense worldwide popularity. It was created in a brainstorming session that was held by the board members of the pod-casting company ‘Odeo Corp’ later known as ‘Obvious Corp’. Jack wanted to know what his friends were doing and came up with an idea that similar to SMS group messaging service, an individual can be provided a platform where, through SMS, a message can be communicated to a group. According to Jack Dorsey, they first came up with the name ‘twitch’, because the phone vibrates when it moves, but they finally ended up with the word “Twitter” after going through dictionary.
The 140 character limit was initially set to make it compatible with the SMS messaging.
Twitter is a micro-blogging site. Microblogging is defined as a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to share brief text updates or micromedia such as as pictures or audio clips with a group.
Twitter has also been described to be similar to web-based IRC (Internet Relay Chat). It is mostly used by adults who might not have had any experience with networking sites earlier.
Twitter was widely used by the candidates in the 2008 Presidential Election Campaign. Barack Obama, the member of Democratic Party used it for publicity. During the 2008 Mumbai Attacks, eyewitnesses sent approximately 80 tweets every 5 seconds. Twitter users sent important information such as emergency contact numbers and the list of hospitals needing blood. Also, public health departments used twitter to provide H1N1 updates.
Why is everyone hopping on to the Twitter bandwagon? The answer is ’simplicity’. Everything about Twitter is simplicity. In this fast paced world, people want to know what is happening and are eager to stay connected with friends, relatives and other people. Twitter is providing a simple solution, it asks ‘What’s happening?’ and provides the user 140 characters to answer. Twitter is probably solving the problem of information overload, with the message length limit in place, tweets are clear and to the point. The users are very much in control of whose updates they receive, when they receive and how they receive the updates (on what device).
As per Alexa’s web traffic analysis, Twitter ranks as one of the 50 most popular sites across the world.
As quoted on the Twitter website, “Simply put, Twitter is what you make of it–receive a lot of information about your friends, or just a tiny bit. It’s up to them.”
Hope this article has made you learn much about Twitter.
