This monster’s here to stay :-) :
Twitter® is indeed big and going to get massive in the mediascape. Twitter®, the microblogging service was founded by programmers Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, and Biz Stone in July 2006. Inspite of having been around in the mediascape for quite a while now, it still baffles people no end. The populace still finds the service quite a monster and for lack of clarity is demonising a beautiful web and online tool, the advantages of which are myriad. Twitter can be an invaluable source of marketing/ advertising/ selling your business venture, products, or even yourself in terms of services and profile as for that matter. It can also be a wonderful source of endless fun as also; it is a great way of staying connected to family, friends, colleagues and business partners in real time, which of course can be great fun!
In this blog, I’m trying to simplify and elucidate how Twitter really works and what it is all about. Twitter is a microblogging service or I simply look at it as a variation of the Facebook® status updates. Another way of understanding Twitter® is to simply look at its conception. The original idea for Twitter® came from Jack Dorsey, who was thinking about interesting ways to merge SMS to the web.
Facebook® status updates are one of the most popular microblogging services. However, it takes place within the larger, general social media site i.e. Facebook®. Twitter® is a specialised version of the aforementioned. The Twitterati however is a much more posh microblogging version, what with the likes Taylor Swift and Amitabh Bachchan forming the tweeps. However, this doesn’t mean that Twitter® caters to just a coterie audience. Infact, it has an upper hand over Facebook® as the former allows people following the celebrities to be connected to them and their updates in a more interpersonal fashion and in real time whilst, the later only offers fan pages as the only mode of connection with these celebs. Moreover, you can re-tweet your celebs’ tweets with less hassles of plagiarism or infringing upon the much loathed copyright issues. Facebook® hardly has much scope in these terms. The direct and easy replies that can be sent via Twitter® render a sense of being better connected. Another advantage over Facebook® updates is that unlike Facebook®, tweets are broadcast to mobile phones in real time as well as, updates are only visible to friends who happen to be on the site at the time. According to Joel Comm (2009), ‘Twitter is the site that has really set the standard in Microblogging.’
Twitter® is here to stay:
To get a social media site snowballing takes quite an amount of endeavour, to establish credibility and making it popular enough. Facebook® marketing was given the crucial ram by its marketing at Harvard and from there to other universities. Twitter® came to be perceived as the next big thing with the boost it received as a direct ramification of receiving the SXSW Award. With more than 3 million members, Twitter® is always going to be the stalwart microblogging service to beat.
Signing up—the importance of choosing the correct brand of username
If it’s going to affect your professional persona, then keep it simple, but smart and sharp. The more closely associated with you, the better it is. If your Twitter® profile is just for the sake of fun, then as far as the username is concerned jazz it up a bit. The more closely associated to the REAL you, in the REAL time, the more fun it shall be! If the purpose of the profile treads on greys i.e. it’s a heady combination of both the aforementioned, I suggest, keep it simple to the end that it’s both fun but doesn’t reek of sheer callousness on the professional side.
