Twitter: The new age

http://fcruzbello.es/2010/01/twitter-como-herramienta-educativa.html

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Zuhaeb Hassan, Staff Writer
June 20, 2012
Filed under Technology

Twitter is the new social media that everyone has an account on nowadays. In fact, anyone who has an Internet connection probably has a Twitter account. But why? Twitter is the new fad that everyone is into because of the fact that the Facebook craze is over and people now need a new fix. Twitter most certainly provides this because of its simplicity and ease of use.

But what exactly is Twitter? Twitter is a site where users provide information or provide a statement about whatever they wish with a 140 character limit. How is this addicting? Well people get the option of following other people and they receive their “tweets” on something called a timeline which is essentially their home page. As human beings we have a natural desire to crave knowledge; what better way to satisfy that craving then to check up on people on the Internet? Twitter satisfies the hungriest of knowledge cravers because on Twitter it is socially acceptable to read up on what people are doing; that is the whole point of the site.

Now, is everyone on Twitter a stalker or a “creeper”? No, because the word stalker does not exist on Twitter. When you click the magic button “tweet” you give consent to having whatever you wrote available to the whole Internet.  People that are uncomfortable with this fact have the option of protecting their tweets, which means that you have to be “following” them to see, but only at their discretion (they have the option of denying the “following” request).

The thing that probably makes Twitter the most appealing is that everyone has an account. This includes celebrities and organizations like Kanye West, Taylor Swift, Ryan Kesler, Paris Hilton, The Vancouver Canucks and The Red Cross. This encourages their fans to create Twitter accounts so that they can “follow” and read what they’re doing and where they’re at, etc.  It gives them the opportunity to interact with their celebrity idols and gives them a feeling of friendship. Also, it provides Twitter users with up to the minute news and information. For example, you can follow CBC’s Twitter account and get updates without watching television or listening to the radio. This also applies to other informative organizations as well such as the WHO (World Health Organization), CNN, TSN etc.

All these reasons caused Twitter to grow at an insane rate; An averages of 140 million tweets are sent to Twitter servers each day and each week the total amount of tweets is over a billion. This means that every second six people tweet. Since it is continuously growing, it encourages more and more people to create Twitter accounts and these numbers continue to grow every year.

With these facts, you can see why Twitter is becoming more and more popular with Internet users.