What do a cartoon bird, the President of the United States, and about 6 million people have in common? One word: Twitter.
Twitter is a social networking site that emerged from the shadow of Facebook to become the fastest growing member community online right now. Its members include celebrities, political figures, and even news networks. Still, many people have never heard of Twitter. The free micro-blogging service simply asks, "what are you doing?" It allows users to answer via status updates posted on their own profile and the profiles of the users who are following their updates.
Twitter members are allotted 140 characters to say whatever they want, and their followers can respond to them using the @ symbol followed by the member's username. Users can "follow" and "unfollow" as many people as they like, but the member you follow has to be following you in order to see your updates. Twitter also has a privacy feature where users can protect their updates by only allowing their approved followers to see them. More recently, users can update what they're doing with pictures and live videos using Ustream, a free live video streaming service.
Founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter was first an SMS (Short Message Service) text-based program that allowed users to send mass messages about their whereabouts to their friends. Since then, Twitter has become usable through many outlets including the web, SMS text, instant messaging, and web and phone applications specifically designed for Twitter. Even though Twitter is only three years old, its popularity has skyrocketed within the last year due to the rising number of celebrities that have joined the service in an effort to reach out to their fans.
"I love Twitter," Angel Robinson recent UM-St. Louis social work grad said. "I tweet at least ten times a day!"
Robinson first learned about Twitter through entertainment mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs on MTV.
"He said to follow him on Twitter, so I joined the site to see what it was about. Now I'm hooked," she said. Along with Diddy and a few friends, Robinson follows CNN, Serena Williams and Oprah.
"My favorite part about Twitter is connecting with the celebrities. I really like UStream because you can tweet them questions and they will answer-it's great."
Twitter makes staying connected with friends and celebrities simple, but the new social networking site has been criticized for making information too available. Pop singer Michelle Williams recently "tweeted" her observation that people have become too comfortable with her on the site and other celebrities have made similar observations.
However, Twitter says the information that users make available is up to them; not everyone who tweets updates their daily whereabouts. President Obama uses Twitter to update about press conferences and promote volunteering. CNN updates its Twitter page with headline news and singers' updates with concert information.
Critics of the site believe that Twitter will start a need-to-know obsessive society in the future. UM-St. Louis sociology instructor Randy Lynn said Twitter may lead to obsessive behavior by some people because of the constant status updating, but such behavior cannot be attributed to Twitter alone.
"If Twitter users become compulsive and need-to-know as the result of their use, it will be because of other social forces that have to do with how the people are using the site," he said.
His colleague, sociology instructor Robert Keel, feels the same.
"If you add in status updates on Facebook and MySpace, it appears that a lot of folks, especially younger folks, are getting hooked into constant contact," Keel said.
Both instructors feel Twitter is another site causing people to waste time in the same manner as its counterparts.
"If people use Twitter to write shallow tweets about celebrities, then it becomes a shallow site," Lynn said. "If people use Twitter to organize resistance in Iran as they've done recently, then it becomes a powerful political tool."
Twitter's staying power will only be determined as time goes on, but right now it is making an impact across the globe. Twitter is still not as popular as Facebook, but with a monthly growth rate of 1382 percent, the site is well on its way.
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