The pros and cons of Twitter
By Emily Silva
November 21, 2008
“I honestly thought I’d hate Twitter,” Patty Van Norman, administrative assistant at Duke University Press, said. “Who cares what you’re doing right now? But now that I use it, I find it invaluable.”
The micro-blogging system known as Twitter has had varying effects on users since its debut in 2007. The system, which is set up somewhat like a series of Facebook statuses, was named for the snippets of information updated by users in 140 characters or less, called “tweets.” Some users, like Van Norman, initially wondered, ‘What’s the point?’ Now, they can’t stop twittering.
“I have a Firefox add-on called Twitterfox that shows new messages in the lower right of my screen,” Van Norman said. She uses Twitter throughout her workday, while at her computer.
Businesses are using Twitter as a way to communicate while traveling. “Most of the early adopters using Twitter to communicate today are writing on the road, from conferences, sales calls and other mobile situations in which they want to share tightly written information chunks,” Janna Anderson, communications professor at Elon University and director of a research project called Imagining the Internet, said. “Twitter users opt in to following the ‘tweets’ of the individuals or organizations from whom they want information – you follow the messages from the people you want to follow,” Anderson said. “This differs from texting on cell phones because it allows you to follow the information shared by interesting people you don’t even know and they are sometimes sharing extremely useful data.”
President-elect Barack Obama has a Twitter account and updates almost daily, as does comedian Steven Colbert. The program works well for people with small bits of information to communicate at a time, rather than writing an entire press release or article on their one issue. “Another way to share ideas is to ‘retweet’ something somebody else has already Twittered,” Sarah Milstein, a New York Times reporter, wrote in her article “How Twitter Can Help at Work.” Not all Twitter users are pleased with Twitter messages’ brevity, though.
“Twitter minimizes and worsens communication and the art of storytelling,” Colin Donohue, the coordinator of student media at Elon University, said. Donohue is displeased with “the limited amount of space you have to provide an update.” It’s easier for people who want a loose connection with distant friends, he said, but not for people who want more communication. “Twitter fragments communication and tells people to boil down their days or their feelings or their sentiments into 140 characters,” Donohue said. “There’s something disconcerting about that.”
A typical Twitter page
On the opposite end, other users are pleased with Twitter’s condensation of thought. “With its requirement for people to squeeze their thoughts into 140 characters or less, Twitter is a perfect tool for a fast-paced, mobile society,” Anderson said. “Compressed information fits and it offers quick-hitting details we can apply to our lives.”
“Sometimes I find out something that’s going on right now that I didn’t know about, or get a link to an interesting article and often my friends just post something funny,” Van Norman said. “Since the posts are so short, they don’t take much time or attention.”
As media continues to develop and change, new applications replace outdated ones. “My research for the Pew Internet Project indicates that mobile devices such as smartphones are going to become most people’s primary communications devices globally by 2020,” Anderson said.
A concern floating around the media is that Twitter is the new AOL Instant Messenger or text messaging system and the old ones will become obsolete. But users are not quite ready to give up on current technologies. “Sometimes people need to have real conversations,” Donohue said, “So AIM will (always) be important. Text messaging is pretty similar to Twitter, anyway.”
Other users are confident the systems will stay with their respective purposes: AIM with instant messaging, texting with texting. Twitter is just another part of media convergence. “Text messaging and Twitter will definitely continue as our dependence on media and connectivity progresses,” Van Norman said. “The form will probably change, but the ‘in-touch-ness’ will continue.”
