Twittering: What is Twitter?
Twitter is basically a site for social networking and micro blogging. It was created by Jack Dorsey in 2006.Each author on twitter can make posts with maximum 140 characters. This was meant to resemble the SMSes that are so common nowadays but led to the use of abbreviations and short cuts. Each post is called a tweet and the people reading the tweets are called followers. The more followers you have, the more famous you are.
How to start a twitter account?
Step 1
Go to www.twitter.com
Step 2
Then just click on Join the conversation.
Step 3
Creating your account:
Be creative while making your user name. People will be intrigued and check out your site.
Enter your email address and password.
Type in the security code and click ‘I accept. Create my account.’
Step 4
Start connecting!
Add your friends and invite people to view your twitter site.
Pros of twittering:
- It keeps you in touch with everything and everyone
- Celebrity twitters help people know what is going on in the lives of their favourite celebrities.
- Companies earn lots of revenue through advertising on twitter sites. Also the authors who allow companies to advertise on their sites earn money for every visitor viewing their site.
- They can also keep track of public opinion of their products and hence keep an eye on their brand image.
- Useful for spreading knowledge.
Cons of twittering:
- It leads to total self absorption. When people enter the world of twitter they forget everything that is happening around them. Once involved they find themselves unable to stop for 5-8 hours.
- It is leading to degeneration of social niceties. As twittering is possible from cell phones, people bury their noses in their tweets all the time even though they are out of their houses.
- A lot of false information is posted on twittering sites. Masses do not bother to verify the information and thus it is spread and also exaggerated. E.g. the spotting or a celebrity or even one of the most wanted mass-murderers.
- It is very easy to set up fake accounts and vote for your tweets so that they are visible on the front page.
Uses of twitter:
- Twitter is used to report thoughts, feelings, emotion, basically anything that a person wants to tweet about.
- It is used by companies to advertise their products.
- Politicians create their own and also fake accounts to campaign for themselves and ask for votes.
- Twittering sites can also be used for education. E.g. there are sites about animals, etc.
- People can follow the activities of their favourtie celebrities and keep in touch with their lives.
- Twitter can also be used to identify dangerous individuals. FBI can keep an eye on tweets with certain keywords occurring frequently. E.g. suicide, gun, bombs, kill, terrorism, etc.
- It can be also used by the police to keep track of sightings of criminals, like a criminal watch.
- Twittering sites can be used by individuals and causes to incite people to protest against wrongdoings and demand their rights.
- Tweets can also be used to survey public opinion about sensitive topics and products.
Privacy:
Authors can regulate their followers and the visibility of their tweets. The site does not distribute your personal information. Twitter has had problems with security in the past but had made improvement to combat the same.
- Karnika Ray
Tags: blogs, how to start a twitter account, internet, internet technology, microblogging, twitter, twittering, websites
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