How is this phenomenon related to us? In fact, using this as
an example, we can then identify that Twitter is far more
outreaching and impactful on our behavior and life as much as
its usefulness for communication. Already there have been many
pages dedicated to the seriousness of Twitter, thus i will like to bring
out a lighter side of Twitter for discussion.
Raise your hand if you are a female reader. (Yes, yes i see your hand there!) It has been researched that women can now be clear of their conscience for being accused of having Twitter activities centric to women. This misconception that women spend more time on tweeting might root from the prejudice (probably from men again) that women spend more time on table chats as compared to men. This causation link is now unfound.
In fact, men have been found to have 15% more followers than women. This shows that men, instead of women, are the main culprits when it comes to spending more time twittering.
In my view, by not having as much chatting session as compared to women, men should be then forgiven for utilizing Twitter to express themselves. However, i have a major concern as to whether 140 characters are enough to substantiate a meaningful communication. Besides, we should ponder whether by posting on Twitter, are we looking just to express ourselves or seeking a two way communication whereby others will provide feedback?
In view of defining communication, i feel that Twitter has an interesting role to play. Proponents may think that communication involves the physical interaction and thus body language plays a part. This is where Twitter plays it role as a medium in which it permits both single and dual directions communication while eliminating the influence of body language. This can then perhaps give rise to interesting experiment, such as how people will respond differently to same set of questions if they are to Twitter directly in front of each other, as compared to asking these same questions physically in front of each other. This experiment can also helps to explore if Twitter has an aiding or detrimental effect on effective communication.
( Image Courtesy of Brain Solis, Click to enlarge )
As mentioned, Twitter is far more outreaching than merely being a communication tool. My interest in Twitter started when i had the rare opportunity to meet Biz Stone (Co-founder of Twitter) over lunch at an international conference. He was kind enough to explain why he felt Twitter as being central to communication in the 21st century and the vast potential Twitter has as a company. This is best summarized in the picture above describing how Twitter extend its reach to various part of our lives.
I believed that something of importance to the society must have been able, at some point of time, convinced its usefulness as an tool. Then the greatest compliment must be to witness how mass behaviors are changed as a sign of success.
In conclusion, i will leave you to ponder upon how Twitter has changed the way we communicate. Do you think Twitter is useful as a communication tool and whether 140 characters are enough?
19 comments:
i have quite a biased view towards Twitter. I think it's not possible to convey the messages with only 140characters. moreover, sometimes the messages are just so irrelevant. who wants to know what you are doing or eating or where you are at? of course, some news broadcasting channels provide latest news through Twitter but 140letters. is that enough? i dont think so.
Personally I dont use twitter but that's not because I have anything against the use of it. To me, Twitter is like a mini extract of facebk(facebk status update!) so I don't see how i need to set up an account when I alr have a facebook account which provides more functions.
However, I think it serves as a platform and generally is beneficial for people (perhaps guys esp !) who generally wants to blog bout their day/let ppl know whats gg on with their lives, but isnt interested in expressing themselves in huge chunks of paragraph. so i guess having twitter isnt all too bad. it basically depends on personal preference.
Although i have a twitter account but seldom use it. Not bias on it just don get used of it and i don have so much thing to update through twitter.
I agreed with justph, it just like a mini extract of FB.
Seriously, I wonder what is the point of tweeting. What excatly is the point of letting people know what you are doing/feeling/thinking/listening and so on every moment. Also, I find that tweeting only serves to open your private life to the anybody who decides to follow your tweet. I highly regard my privacy. Unless one day I decided that I've no use for my privacy, then may I'll tweet.
It's an expected fact that women spend more time tweeting than man. And in case the research didn't mention, i personally figure out that women's tweets are more personal and more direct towards listeners (friends, fans, followers ..) while men's tweets/retweets are news most of the time. So back to the research result, it might account for why women tweet more because there are somebody there listening and giving feebacks to them. On the other hand, for men, their followers follow them mainly because of their latest updates. However, you might want to check out Perez Hilton, his tweeting pattern more close to women's category.
@ Mona: I guess you haven't tried Twitter to the fullest. Twitter is not about letting others know what you're eating or where you are at. (if u don't like those tweets, you can always Unfollow the owner). People get certain information over Twitter rapidly and briefly, such as answers to a question, votes, opinions etc.
News broadcasters do not tweet the whole article. They put the tittles or key points and provide with a link to the news. In this case, 140 characters are pretty enough for them. On the other hand, most of news broadcasters facilitate the article with a button which allows readers to tweet if they like to share the news to their friends. Once the news goes into Twitter, its circulation occurs with retweets. I find this an indeed effective way of conveying messages which benefits both news broadcasters and readers. From the news broadcasters' point of view, ur readers are helping you broadcast the news. From a reader's point of view, i personally find it more convenient to get all the news in brief from one source. So that's my 2cents
I've personally created a twitter account before, but i've never come around to the idea of actually using it. Although it is becoming a common form of communication, i highly value the idea of privacy and would not want to subject my little whims and whams to the scrutiny of the world.
On the other hand, I believe it is highly effective form of conveying important messages to the masses.
Twitter efficiencies seem to depend highly on how its users decide to make the best use of it, and how comfortable they are with broadcasting their thoughts and doubts. Or if they decide to put it to proper use in translating critical messages to the masses.
Hello DIII!
I guess another major reason why twitter becomes so popular is because of the busier lifestyle we have nowadays. Even so, we are still driven by the desire to stay connected to our close friends. Due to this need of affiliation and the inability to meet up with friends and key contacts, we resort to twitter to keep ourselves updated about others, at the same time, update other people about how we've been.
(: great entry! continue writing, I will continue to be your faithful reader!!!
I think like all communication tool, twitter has its good and bad points. It's a great medium for getting the latest news and happenings around the world. A very good and recent eg being the earthquake at haiti when internet access was all cut off.
Plus, it's a great platform for fans to feel closer to their their idols. They'd be able to ask them celebrities direct questions without actually sending them through magazines and waiting for months for their responses. And more accurate responses too.. Without all the made up tabloid from the paps.
But twitter can also be quite impersonal, when you're considering it as a communication tool between friends. I don't know what the future holds for keeping up with friends.. but if it's gonna boil down to twitter and Facebook, instead of meeting up personally or a phonecall, reckon it'd really be quite sad, no?
I personally find twitter a little redundant. The reason being that 140 words is just now enough to express yourself. If you just want to give a small shout out about your current status, facebook has a similar function unless of course, you do not have a facebook account.
If you need an avenue to blog about your thoughts and feelings, a blog would be a better place than twitter for you could post more stuffs in there as compared to a mere 140 words limit.
Hi there!
i personally do not use twitter as i feel that it is troublesome to create another account. furthermore what is the use to tweet to ppl about what im doing right now? even in facebook, i hardly update my status.
lastly, the 140 words limit just doesnt make any sense
jiaman
As a new user of Twitter (Today only, actually, lmao!), I've yet to get addicted to it, since I still view it as the "status update" part of Facebook. However, I do agree that it's a useful communication tool because it's much more userfriendly for people with wireless access mobile phones than Facebook itself.
There might be a word limit, however, the whole fancinating part about Twitter is about how it's so easy to just type a random shoutout about a casual activity or feeling at the moment and post it up in a matter of 2 seconds, and in a blink of a moment, no one honestly thinks up 140 words at one go so the word limit usually doesn't play as a negative factor.
Plus, 140 words?? That's what we have online blogs for. :)
P.S. I can't believe you actually met the co-founder of Twitter over lunch! So cool! :)
I personally do not have or used twitter but I do have Facebook! As far as I know they are similar in a way and so I will express my opinion base on my experiential use of Facebook.
I think that the usefulness and effectiveness of Twitter as a communication tool depends largely on the audience (or person visiting the twitter page/tweet).
If the audience has the intention of getting research notes or citing references for his/her bibliography works, it is definately not ideal.
However, if the audience is a friend or even a dreamy-eyed 'interested party' he/she can actually find out what the author of the tweet is doing regularlying without have more direct (face-to-face)communication. By following the author's tweet religiously, the reader will know the author's interests, hobbies and in a way get to know him/her better.
My two cents worth. From twokentsworth.wordpress
-K-
I am not a Twitter user either but I heard from my friends that Twitter has a word limit which I think it was refer to as the 140 words in ya blog.
I was just thinking what's the use of twitter as a venue for communication when there is a word limit on its' user?
You mention about expressing ourselves and seeking for feedbacks. Wouldn't the use of blogs or even facebook be a better communication venue?
As far as I know, many who uses twitter back out eventually. Thus, twitter may be the new 'IN' thing now but will not be very favorable as compared to other sites in the long run.
Like Debs said, every communication tools has its function and it may either be good or bad, depending on how you view it.
Twitter do seem like the 'status update' on FB. To me, Twitter is a revenue for us to express our 'spontaneous' thoughts and such. It doesn't have to be what you're doing cos really, who wants to know abt that?! I guess the only thing that entice people to want to tweet is the accessibility of it compared to FB especially for those with iTouch and BB.
That said, Twitter allows others to scrutinise your tweets. It may be personal or random, but putting yourself under the spotlight is quite questionable don't you think? Like that recent case where the mum tweets about her son drowning. THAT IS QUESTIONABLE. Who tweets when their child is suffering? And oh, her son died. Instead of getting help, she was happily tweeting away.
I guess it's up to us to judge whether tweeting is good or bad for us as essentially, WE are the ones using it, not others. To each his own.
I used to think that Twitter's redundant (I created an account back in 2007 but only started using it towards the end of 2009!) but that was because not many people were using it then!
As Twitter becomes more and more popular these days, I realised that even I became a little addicted to it, and it's quite fun to see what friends tweet about in their daily lives and comment :) One of my friends used to always say, "Twitter is the new msn." I'd have to agree with you that Twitter has indeed changed the way we communicate with each other. We get to know what our fellow Twitters are doing via updates, some some even get to follow their favourite artistes and find out more about their life!
Although 140 characters seem short and insufficient for us to convey all our thoughts, I personally feel that it's beneficial to some of us (especially people like me) who have this tendency to sound long-winded. With the 140-characters limit, everything's short and sweet.. and I'm assuming that it's easier to read + most would prefer messages that are straight to the point, so why not?
Well I guess at the end of the day, it's still not up to us to decide whether or not Twitter is good because everyone has their own preference. On the other hand however, it is important to note that there are some disadvantages about twitter (e.g. people getting stalked / people getting into trouble with the law because of the things they tweet). Hence it's better to use it discreetly :)
I think that twitter is a good communication tool, since people seek for efficiency in communicating with others. However, as the popularity of twitter rises, people use it not only for communicating, but also to follow the trend. And do not forget that face-face communication is also one of the essential part in communication.
I am not a twitter user in the first place. But still I personally feel that twitter is a useless tool for communication. It is there to indicate what we are doing or thinking now, however it has not much relations to interaction with other people. It is pretty much a one way kind of communication with us informing others about us via the 'status'.
Though is can be in some way a dual form of communication as people do tweet back or some sort. However, to me it is like grabbing the attention of others and making them know what you are thinking at the moment and not giving chance to real interaction.
Therefore I hope people should not just follow the trend blindly, but remember that the best way to interact is still a dual interaction in person. :)
Twitter though influential, is really just a social networking tool. The 140 characters are pretty much there to tell people you barely or rarely meet how you feel and think. Probably if it's provocative enough, evoke a response from them and that's pretty much it.
It's probably cuz I have this view that's why Twitter isn't exactly an essential part of my life. I doubt that it will be one in the later part of my life either as FB kinda has it settled and I still enjoy the good old chatting sessions where one discusses random views on the world around us. :) :)
Nonetheless, I still feel that having Twitter is good due to the fact it provides one of the many alternatives to express ourselves! (Despite having to cram 140 words together)
KUDDOS to Twitter1!
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