Twitter, the new obsession of the Technorati, is instigating a social revolution

By Ryan Catanese

November 21, 2008

What are you doing?

It’s a simple question with a simple answer, presented simply at the top of the window. It’s Twitter, the new

Twitter's straightforward layout

social interactivity tool that has swept the nation’s top media outlets and is growing more and more popular as a more informal communications tool, especially with young people.

The concept is straightforward: you have 140 characters, including spaces and punctuation, to tell the world exactly what you’re doing right now, whether by text message or a computer.  This straightforward concept has made “microblogging” one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet, according to The New York Times.

“It’s called ‘microblogging’ because some people use it just to inform their friends about what they are doing minute-by-minute, for instance writing things like, ‘I just voted for Obama, and now I’m headed over to Starbucks to get my free cup of Election Day coffee,’” said Janna Anderson, director of a research project called Imagining the Internet.  “It has since been used by political campaigns, businesses and media organizations to quickly brief people on developing situations.”

The best example of the power of a tool like Twitter was when an earthquake that registered a 7.8 on the Richter scale hit China.  Who was first on the scene?  Twitter.

“A 7.8 magnitude struck China and the news unfolded before our eyes on Twitter,” said MG Siegler, an author for the techno-blog VentureBeat.  ”Before it was on CNN, before MSNBC, before the BBC, even before the United States Geological Survey (which handles earthquake data) had the information, Twitter was on it.  While the mainstream media scrambled to put up their “breaking news” headlines, on Twitter we had pictures, maps, videos all being sent in real-time.”

Here’s how it works: people “follow” each other on Twitter in a process similar to RSS Feeds on any other blog.  So, John Doe sees “earthquake!” on the status of someone that he is following and re-posts that information.  The people who follow John Doe see that and re-post it, and it blazes across the internet.

“Twitter users opt in to following the ‘tweets’ of the individuals or organizations from whom they want information – you follow the messages from the people you want to follow,” Anderson said.  ”This differs from texting on cell phones because it allows you to follow the information shared by interesting people you don’t even know and they are sometimes sharing extremely useful data.”

In the case of the earthquake, people in China were twittering about the earthquake while it was happening.  This leaves traditional news outlets in the dust.

Twitter, it seems, is the communications tool of the future, especially when considering the tools that people are using more and more to stay connected with one another.

“I just think that it is really handy,” said Chris Pickens, a senior at Elon University.  “It’s nice to know where all of your friends are or, if I want, to literally be getting the news before the news releases it.  I can just turn on my phone and read snippets about whatever I want to read about, and then, if I’m interested, can follow up on it.

“It’s like having a newspaper with a bunch of headlines, but it is personalized to me because it includes what my friends are up to and I can choose who I follow.”

“My research for the Pew Internet Project indicates that mobile devices such as Smartphones are going to become most people’s primary communications devices globally by 2020,” Anderson said.  “With its requirement for people to squeeze their thoughts into 140 characters or less, Twitter is a perfect tool for a fast-paced, mobile society.”

“What are you doing?”  With one simple question, Twitter is changing the way people communicate and the way that people receive news.

Are you Twittering yet?