Maybe I'm oldschool, but I have no idea what Twitter is. What I do know about it is that it's pretty much a way for people to let the public know what they are doing at all times. I remember at the end of the spring semester last year, there was a contest on the radio that followed Twitterers. The jist of the game was to see who tweeted the most and who's tweets were the most interesting. After a few weeks the contestants were narrowed down and radio listeners voted for the final winner. I thought it was dumb that somebody would need to tweet what they were doing at every moment. I guess they were bored. So this is an investigation to see if there is something more to Twitter than a detailed daily schedule.
The first thing that I realized is that, like other SNS sites, Twitter can be used by celebrities and politicians to connect with their fans or followers. Celebrities can now be their own paparazzi! I actually learned that some celebrities have 'ghost twitterers' who write the messages for the stars, in the stars own words, of course. This helps celebrities drop to a more personal level with fans.
Another thing that I learned was that Twitter was more useful in times of need, for sending messages. For example, if somebody was dying, one could put up a post on Twitter to explain to everybody that they are at the hospital with this person and that they are in need of support. Of course, people are more technically advanced and sending and receiving messages via SNS or SMS is much more quick and easy than the phone or letter.
Twitter has also been used to rally. In 2009 Iranians used this as the only way to gather and rally against their government, since text messages were blocked.
Overall, Twitter really isn't that bad. I can see why celebrities would want to use it, because it's free publicity and fans want to use it because they can hear first hand what's going on in their favorite celebs life. I can also see how it might be useful in times of need or to bring groups of people together. I still don't understand why some people go way overboard and tweet their whole life, though. I still believe in privacy.
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