Charlie’s Pick of the Week: Twitter

By Charlie Greenwald

Web A&E Editor

Between maintaining a Facebook account, an email account, and a mobile phone
with unlimited texting, it’s pretty easy to be connected. Still, those
little notifications and occasional back pocket vibrations can only go so
far.

That’s where Twitter comes in.

This week’s Pick of the Week, though usually a movie, album or TV
show/event, is Twitter (technically, it counts as an alternative form of
media, so it works). Twitter is the hugely popular social microblogging site
that allows people to post (or, as it’s informally know, “Tweet”) messages
140 characters or under about miscellaneous topics of interest.

Although created by NYU graduate Jack Dorsey way back in 2006, Twitter is
more popular now than ever. Approximately half of the students at Staples
have Twitter accounts. This number has more than doubled in the past year,
which is, oddly enough, a reflection of the country as a whole. The number
of United States Twitter users nearly doubled from January 2010 to November
2011. It is rising faster in membership popularity than Facebook.

But why is this?

The reason everybody is catching on right now is because of Twitter’s
incredibly simple design, celebrity fan base and America’s boredom with
Facebook.

The first reason has to do, in essence, with technological minimalism.
Although very similar to Facebook in its approach and mission, Twitter
limits one’s profile page from featuring photos, surveys or
applications-just statuses. The simplicity of Twitter makes it a very
manageable social networking site, for its mission is simple and its
formatting easy to navigate. With much less on it than Facebook, MySpace or
any other social networking site, the beauty of Twitter lies in its
easiness.

But there’s more.

Since Twitter is so easy to navigate, mobile technology is remarkably
compatible with the Twitter format. Twitter only has 140 letters with each
post. One’s profile page features every Tweet from every person on the same
page; all one has to do is scroll down. When topics trend on Twitter, they
are all collected on one page, so Twitter users can see every post by every
person they’re following regarding a certain issue. Therefore, one can Tweet
quite easily when out and about, whereas the much more complicated Facebook
is less easy to use on a Smartphone. Facebook has photos, likes, comments,
and other assorted features; Twitter avoids this overabundance of abilities,
which subsequently makes it the easier portable social network.

There’s also the Hollywood influence.

There is also an incredible amount of celebrity involvement on Twitter. So
many celebrities, from actors to politicians to authors, use Twitter as both
an instrument of self-promotion and a canvas for the everyday stream of
consciousness. To a celebrity-obsessed culture like America, Twitter is the
best way to find out about anything from John Mayer’s opinions about bath
robes to in-studio updates from Slash to campaign goals from Jon Huntsman.
Sometimes, as described in Ben Reiser’s article, Twitter can even help the
average American interact electronically with celebrities. Twitter is the
most effective way for people to get in touch with and follow the everyday
thoughts of their idols, because this way America knows more about them than
ever before.

Finally, we turn to Twitter’s “cool factor.”

A possible reason for Twitter’s newfound popularity is because of
America’s discontent with Facebook. It’s not that Facebook isn’t
thriving-because it is-but merely that Facebook has dominated the social
scene for the past four years and people want a new site to fall in love
with. Six years ago, when the social networking phenomenon was just
beginning, MySpace blew everything else out of the water-and then faded away
because of both Facebook’s popularity and the security problems. Now, it’s
just a venue for musicians to post their music. Twitter offers an escape
from Facebook, but not an escape from the cyber world of your friends and
followers.

Facebook, although not as old or amateur as MySpace, is now getting older.
Unfortunately for Facebook’s popularity, people are always looking for the
next big thing. There is no way of knowing whether or not Facebook will die
out in the next 5 years, but if a new site comes along and catches on, it
spices up the competition quite a bit. Much like celebrities themselves, a
web site could be totally “in” one day and then a waste of time the next.
Twitter is the simplest, quickest, more convenient alternative. social
network

But aside from the three reasons mentioned above-which, again, were simple
formatting, celebrity usage and America’s insatiable appetite for social
diversity-Twitter really is just the “status update” of Facebook. That’s all
it is. It’s just posting thoughts, viewing responses, and posting more
responses. It’s without pictures, without “likes” or “pokes,” and without
inboxes. It summarizes thoughts, from one moment to the next. It encourages
opinions, humor, and individuality.

Although Facebook currently has more users, Twitter is definitely on the rise. It’s is a straightforward and refreshing liberation from the “walls” of
Facebook.

And that’s whyAmerica, the land of the free, is eating it up.