tweeting

What is tweeting? A play on words, "tweeting" refers to telling a global community of friends and strangers what you are doing at the present moment. It comes from the original meaning of uttering a succession of small sounds (like a bird) or chatter rapidly about of trivial matters. In the online world, use of the term tweeting (or "twittering") started on the messaging service and social networking website Twitter. The actual note, or post is referred to as a "tweet."

What is Twitter? It’s a company now known as X which offers free, real-time short messaging service (SMS) that delivers messages on computers and smartphones, and is considered social media. X is a microblog which is essentially a venue for publishing yourself on the Web. On the receiving end, X is ambient, meaning updates from the people you choose to follow will float to your smartphone, IM, or Web site and you are only expected to read them as you want.

The platform encourages users to post short updates (including short URLs) as to your current activities to stay in touch with friends, relatives, coworkers and anonymous followers. These updates are known as tweets. When users post what they are doing, or rather send a message to Twitter aka X, they do not expect a "response" but rather look for "re-tweets" and "comments." As with other social networking services, Twitter took the world by storm and similar to facebooking, a variety of apps have been created to support it (such as TweetDeck and TwitScoop). Twitter has also birthed it's own lexicon... go to twitterverse to see examples!

While many people find it unlikely that anyone should care about the nano-activities of someone's life, this technology has far-reaching applications including automated notifications and link sharing and it's become especially relevant for journalists. 

Historical perspective: The 1st tweet was tweeted on March 21, 2006. Around that time, only 16% of online adults used social media. The first prototype was built in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched publicly in August of 2006; in May 2007, Twitter Inc was founded. By February of 2009, it was the third most used social networking service. Twitter has become a force for revolution, and for disclosing personal information that may destroy your political career, as in the case of politician Anthony Weiner and his sexting scandals. Dubbed "Weinergate," the Democratic U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner used Twitter multiple times to send links of sexually suggestive pictures of himself to multiple women, forcing him to resign from Congress.

Twitter has proved to be an instrumental tool in organizing people in times of catastrophe and disseminating information in countries that censor news and Internet usage. For example, during the 2008 Mumbai attacks, eyewitnesses sent an estimated 80 tweets every five seconds as the tragedy unfolded. Twitter users on the ground helped in compiling a list of the dead and injured. In addition, users sent out vital information such as emergency phone numbers and the location of hospitals that needed blood donations. The use of Twitter by victims, bystanders, and the public to gather news and coordinate responses to the November 2008 Mumbai siege led CNN to call it "the day that social media appeared to come of age."

In June 2009, following allegations of fraud in the Iranian presidential election of that year, protesters used Twitter as a rallying tool and as a method of communication with the outside world after the Iranian government blocked several other modes of communication. Organizations that support relief efforts are also using Twitter. In part by using the social networking sites, activists organised and publicised the unprecedented protests that gave rise to the Arab Spring in December 2010, which saw longtime governments in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya fall, regimes in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain clash with the opposition, and leaders in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE offer more benefits to their populace.

As of June 2017, Katy Perry became the first person to reach 100 million Twitter followers, and in September of 2017, Twitter doubled its character count for tweets from 140 characters to 280 characters. But it wasn't until the fourth quarter of 2017 that Twitter finally turned its first ever profit.

To see more Twitter terms, click on the twitterverse link below!