Tweeting on Twitter

Joycelyn Opoku

04/04/2018

Tweeting on Twitter.

Twitter in recent years had been used beyond socializing and marketing. It is used to report “breaking news” and this has helped emergency services to do their work. It is also used to report dangers, the weather, and other useful information. As it is, it has been used to share information in real time. When major events take place, something happens on a TV show, when something happens to the president or a celebrity, or when significant events are unfolding, twitter is used to communicate these situations to its followers. In the article “How the Boston Marathon explosions reveal the two sides of Twitter,” written by Simon Ricketts, it explains how twitter has “been touted as the first with news.” When the explosion took place, twitter became useful in giving updates about the situation. Ricketts explains that “three years ago, twitters immediacy, its intimacy, its impact would drive stories forward.” He is totally right. Hashtags has been very useful on twitter. When a hashtag is clicked on, it reveals every information regarding a particular issue that has been posted on twitter. This brings immediacy and quick access. People at work could read about it and would not need to go home to watch the news on television. Also on twitter there are more witness accounts which makes information more credible.

            This same idea is also shown in the article “Here’s what we can learn from how Twitter responded to Paris,” by Alexandra Siegel. After ISIS attacked France, twitter was a main media source used to communicates what was being done about the situation. Siegel explains that when the attacked took place, “heads of state, religious leaders, celebrities around the world took social media by storm.” Twitter provided far more preliminary evidence because photos were shared and witnesses gave their account.

            Twitter can also be useful for journalistic purposes. Rickett’s states that ‘the funnel is the journalist.” In other words, it is the funnels job to take all the information which are posted on twitter, edit or correct it and then post it up. Journalists or new reporters can always gather their information from twitter without being at the scene. Twitter can also be used for politics. When president Obama was elected president in 2012, the event received 327,000 tweets per minute. There are is trash talking between political representatives on Twitter. President Trump recently trash talked Joe Biden on twitter and this went viral on different social medias such as Facebook. Twitter can also be used for organizational purposes. Some college courses such as “Web and Social media com,” use twitter to teach students about the benefits of social media. Twitter is also used to facilitate conversation with students, and also expands boundaries of learning that traditional textbooks cannot do. Also non-profit organizations give information about job opportunities and volunteer opportunities to its followers.

            When a bomb went off at Ariana Grande’s concert in Britain, Ariana posted on twitter saying “broken from the bottom of my heart, I am so so sorry. I don’t have words.” This particular tweet took twitter by storm. It got over millions of likes and over millions of comments. This was the best thing Ariana could have done considering the fact that 22 people were killed and 50 were injured in the explosion. Showing condolences was the first and foremost thing Ariana could do.

            Another tweet which went viral on twitter was LeBron James tweet concerning president Trump’s invitation to the White House to the league champion Golden State Warriors. LeBron James tweeted saying “u bum @stephencurry30 already said he ain’t going! So therefore ain’t no invite. Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up.” This tweet got over a million likes and thousands of comments. Others found it funny, others agreed with him and Trump supporters just found it disrespectful.

            One other tweet which went viral on twitter was that of a young teen from Nevada. This young teen in boxed Wendy’s saying “Yo @Wendy’s how many retweets for a year of free chicken nuggets?” Wendy’s responded by saying “18 million.” The young teen then tweeted “HELP ME PLEASE. A MAN NEEDS HIS NUGGS.” After the tweet reaching a surprising share of 3.6 million it is currently now the most retweeted post ever. The tweet received over 985k likes when it hit 3.6 million shares and is still rising.

            The tweets that were shared on twitter over the spring break was about the Easter convention. The church of Pentecost was meeting together at a hotel in Albany to celebrate the death of Christ. This particular subject was important to tweet about just in case anyone else wanted to join the trip to Albany. Followed the president of Ghana on twitter, Delay who is a celebrity in Ghana and also abn which is an afroradio station in Europe. It was important that tweets were made to the president concerning the education system in GH. He is the only president that is willing to allow students go to SHS for free. With the current economy of Ghana, it may be highly impossible but nothing is impossible when one puts their mind to it.

            Twitter is way different from blogging. With blogs one can type as many words as they would like but with twitter only 280 characters are allowed. This however permits one to take their time when typing and to also think about the words in which they tweet. Hashtags are famous on twitter but are not on blogs. Events break out on twitter but never on blogs. Blog are not as important as twitter when it comes to socializing and marketing. Blogs are more informational and educational but twitter is more social. It is easier for a post to go viral on twitter than on blogs since they are shorter.

            Compared to other social medias, twitter has limited characters. Facebook has live videos but twitter does not. Facebook can upload long videos but twitter does not allow it. Instagram has different filters but twitter does not.