why twitter is kind of useful sometimes
Lots of people don’t understand Twitter. And for good reason. In its launch era, people were both simultaneously calling it the “darling of the SMS world” and “#$%@#$%#@ stupid”, which propelled the simple site into the ever-growing realms of URL = Ubiquity first, Revenue Later (Bloomberg Magazine, circa 2009). And it was called so, since it was sold for millions of dollars on the market- yet it didn’t seem to have any source of revenue. It’s one thing to have no profit – and it’s totally and completely absurd to have no way of generating money. Well, at the time. All of this combined for me to make me believe this site was going to crash and burn at the time – yet it has managed to sustain itself remarkably. And here’s why.
WHAT TO DO ON TWITTER:
The great thing about the site is you can post current thoughts and feelings that you would love to convey to the world, yet you don’t necessarily need to expect a response from anyone – but people have the option of saying something to you. Passive agressive emotions, funny things noticed in every day life, exciting news – it’s all sent to everyone that wants to know a little bit of what’s going on in someone else’s life. We can be so trapped in our own little worlds that it’s fun to just take a peek into another’s perspective without feeling intrusive.
MARKETING:
The perfect way to stay in touch with big celebrities, fast paced companies, restaurants, resorts, deals is through Twitter. Youtube channels inform you on the spot when they upload a video, local mountains inform you of snow conditions and any issues on site, internet businesses love to throw out codes for deals for a limited time. Some companies respond faster to Twitter complaints or questions than through direct email – which isn’t exactly advisable as a company itself, but could help a customer in a bind. And for summer class, my professor utilized Twitter to the max – updating students through mobile tweets about posted quizzes, homework due dates, and little reminders since not everyone is endearingly attached to UBC Vista.
HASHTAGS:
These things add a little bit of “oomph” to your every day message. For those who don’t use Twitter (and for a lot of people who do use it but misunderstand), hashtags are the alphanumeric way of conveying emotions, emoticons, and or current objects that you’re interacting with in some way. These hashtagged words become added to the list of a million things that, with enough hits, become “trending” in your local area or city. Why not just use a normal emoticon instead of, for example, #excite? Probably because the current usage of such aren’t really popular anymore after being cycled over and over throughout the last ten years or so, which are why new faces like :3 and (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻) are becoming in vogue. Plus, hashtags dont typically follow regular syntax – they’re very often added on the end of a message, which can help clarify what you’re talking about without adding more words to your short 140 character tweet.
PROBLEMS WITH TWITTER:
Yeah, the site is really self-serving. Often times it feels like as though someone was shouting very loudly at you that they’re putting on their pants – it’s obnoxiously pointless. But people can be very easily un-followed without too much notice or hassle. Tweets that I personally would qualify for a violent end would be:
- continual back and forth more than 10 times between one other person – Just text them. Everyone knows you have their number, you’re boring everyone and people will want to kick you for not bothering to do the obvious
- masked pretentious tweets about something that you know that somebody else didn’t, or about working extremely hard, or anything that makes you look good compared to others around you. You wouldn’t do this in real life, would you?
- Tweets asking for attention – it’s hard to explain this one, but it’s basically fishing for sympathy and compliments and whatnot. This isn’t where I want to read a deluge of lies spewed from people – I just want to see a few funny lies here and there
ARGUMENTS AGAINST TWITTER: DEFENDED
People always say that Twitter is just the same thing as a Facebook status update – and it is. The FB version even allows a ridiculous amount more for you to say as well. The problem is that there are too many people you know on Facebook, and oftentimes you expect something in return once you post it on your wall. Far too many people who you don’t know will view it and judge, whereas in the Twitter world you can feel a little less uninhibited by the anonymity amongst the many thousands out there. Facebook is also garnering a mass of utterly nonsense status updates as well, which just lessens the significance of everyone’s posts on the site.
THINGS THAT SHOULD BE TWEETED:
- Pictures of your delicious meals, and where it came from. It’s helpful to know where and when, and how much – especially when followers are on the go and looking for new places to eat. Also it’s like food porn – those pictures are begging to be drooled over by everyone.
- Hilarious incidents, whether they be happening to someone else or something detrimental to yourself. It feels good to laugh about problems. Constant tweets about yourself that are serious aren’t that fun, though. Also it just makes you look really self-centred. We want to hear stuff that’s actually interesting… =)
Anywho, follow me on @thelamblog (https://twitter.com/thelamblog) or at least sign up for an account if you don’t have one! It’s tons of fun and although not exactly necessary to life survival (like anything enjoyable is), it’s pretty darn helpful at times. I won’t lie – you kind of have to warm up into it to actually really enjoy sending tweets – but do give it time. You’ll see!
Good insight into Twitter
Although, I still believe Twitter isn’t for everyone! 
Thanks Tyler! =)