Is there anybody else out there a bit tired of social networks like MySpace and Facebook? I mean don’t get me wrong I love these sites, but the shenanigans that come with the package these days is getting out of hand. Lots of drama like causing break ups, getting people arrested, and getting people fired from their jobs, and just a lot of things that nobody wants to have happen. Thankfully there is an alternative to all the madness and it is called Twitter! Twitter is also a social network too but it just works in a different way. A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranks Twitter as the third largest social network (Facebook being the largest, followed by MySpace), and puts the number of unique monthly visitors at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visits at 55 million.
Twitter is a micro-blogging service that enables it’s users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Think of tweets like the “status” of your facebook account. For those of you, who do not know what micro-blogging is; allow me to fill you in. Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates or micro media such as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. So it is basically a shortened form of blogging. Regular blogging is often long and boring. Some bloggers tell their life stories because some blogs have no limit on text. I do not have time to read a whole person’s life story on the internet. Twitter forces simplicity; 140 characters is the limit per tweet. That way Bloggers cannot get out of hand, rambling nonsense like many do.
Twitter is unique because it is so user friendly. Answer one simple question, “What are you doing”? Now it may seem silly to have a site just dedicated to people telling each other what they are doing all day, but isn’t that what most people do on all the other social networks anyway? I find it amazing how many people do not even really talk on their MySpace and facebook accounts. They will just check to see if they received any comments or messages. How many times have you wanted to know something about a friend’s personal life and got no reply? Twitter solves that problem from the start. Every entry is personal because it is what they are doing and thinking!
One of the biggest problems with social networks is that they have become just photo galleries. Some people do not even put any information at all about themselves personally. These people obviously do not want you to know who they really are because chances are they are probably lame. All you have to work with are a bunch of pictures that you have to make a determination of this person’s personality with. This by the way can be very difficult because when doing this you are judging the book by its cover, and we all know how dangerous that can be! Twitter does not have space for you to upload hundreds of fake modeling pictures and pictures of you and your friends partying on the weekends. Yes I said fake modeling pictures. How can you tell if a modeling picture is fake you may ask yourself, here is how you do it. If the person in the picture is not a model than it is a FAKE modeling picture. That was easy right? Once again Twitter brings simplicity to the table by only allowing one profile photo to be uploaded.
The fact that Twitter is so user friendly is probably the main reason for its huge success. Finding cool people right away is simple with twitter. When you start your account you can start to follow other users. This is just like requesting to be someone’s friend on MySpace. The huge difference is that unlike on MySpace where you can be denied, Twitter allows you to follow whoever you want instantly all the time. It is like always being accepted by everyone you send a friend request to! There are people who tweet every hour just to keep their followers up to date with what is going on in their lives. This makes Twitter such a more personal site. Other social networks you have people creating these identities that are just out of this world. Sometimes you just have to ask yourself when you are on some of these pages, “Is this person really this cool???” The answer that is, probably not LOL! I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are doing the world a disservice by faking the funk and lying to us.
People from all walks of life are getting there tweet on from celebrities, to astronauts, to students, to parents, to politicians! Twitter can be accessed in many different ways making it simple to stay in touch with all your fellow tweeters. You can accept and reply to tweets from sms, your computer, and from your cell phone. The days of just scrolling through endless galleries of photos and getting no dialogue from your “so called friends” are over. It is time you got down with the new generation of social networking, get your Tweet on!
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