Twitter? yes, please!

Okay so here is the deal: I was basically “anti-twitter” before joining this class. I saw no point in the site and no redeeming value (or entertainment value, for that matter) of the short little status updates. After being in class for a couple weeks and the topic often coming up, I started to feel a little bit left out and then I just started hearing about it everywhere. So, I reluctantly made myself an account about a month ago. Don’t let this fool you, I never tweeted, until TODAY. Today I tweeted for the first time and I decided to follow a whole bunch of people. I think I may get addicted to this site. My mission for this subject matter post is to persuade those of you who have not joined Twitter to do so.

I will stress four areas that I think are the attributes of Twitter that make it worth while: entertainment, cathartic release, charity and knowledge.  I will delve further into each of these areas and I hope that you find a little curiosity for the site!

Entertainment

There is no doubt that this site provides entertainment. This entertainment is WAY different than the amusement Facebook brings us. Twitter makes it so simple and convenient to follow your favorite stars or any type of public figure, for that matter. Whether you want to follow Britney Spears, John Mayer, Barack Obama, Coach Sark, or really anyone you can name, they are on there. You can even follow companies or magazines. I am following In Style magazine and they offer deals and promotions through their tweets, what is better than that? Once you become a follower of a celebrity or company it shows up on your homepage what they have tweeted, you don’t even have to search for it or type anything in like on Facebook. Anything that you are interested in will be on Twitter and it compiles all the tweets onto your homepage for easy access. This has to be entertaining because it is only things and people you are interested in. On Facebook, any of your friends can pop up in the news feed or the live feed. I know that I don’t really care about every single one of my friends since I have over 600 of them. But with Twitter, I have chosen only those people that I want to show up. You even have the chance of communicating with the celebs you follow. You can tag them in your tweet and if they are really as cool as the rep they are given, they will tweet back to you! For example, I am following Justin Beiber who, even though he is only 15, is really good at replying to his fans. He just made one of his fan’s days by tweeting this:

justinbieber

RT @amandanoyes @justinbieber im having such a bad day. can you make me feel better & follow me? == U got it. feel better and smile.

 

There really is no argument against the fact that Twitter is entertaining. The site is what you make of it and if you compile it with people you are interested in, you could be amused and intrigued for hours at a time; you would be surprised how fast and often your favorite celebs, magazines, or companies tweet and retweet.

 

Cathartic Release

There is just something about saying what is on your mind to no one and everyone at the same time that gives me a great feeling of release. Already today I have had some annoyances and just by voicing them to no one (because right now I only have one follower) I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders. You don’t have to settle for Twitter Rants though, you can rave on Twitter too! It is a great way to release and enhance excitement as well! Have some great news, a fun event coming up? Let everyone and anyone know how excited you are. By exciting other people, you are in turn exciting yourself more. Twitter is definitely a perfect way to release and enhance emotions in a good way. You never know, you could even get some good advice on a retweet or something…

Charity

If you are one of those people that thinks that Twitter does no good to society, think again. Many charities have teamed up with or used Twitter as a way to raise money. Celebrities have even used their Twitter account to facilitate money donations. For example, Hugh Jackman used his Twitter to advertise the fact that he wanted to donate over $70,000 to a charity of someone’s choice. All they had to do was convince him in a tweet why he should choose their charity. Read here for more info on how this all turned out. There have also been non celebrities who try to use Twitter to their advantage, saying that for every follower they will donate X amount of money, or these people here had a contest to see who could get to 500 followers the fastest and then donated money to a charity of their preference. Twitter, as a company, has also paired with organizations such as Room to Read, to promote donations to a literacy fund. They are incorporating the process of creating a special wine and followers may pre purchase bottles. I am sure there are many more cases such as this out there that prove that Twitter does have redeeming qualities and isn’t all about celebrity woes and what random people spilled on themselves on the bus that day.

 

Knowledge

I have saved the most convincing argument for last. Well, it was what convinced me to join Twitter. Twitter isn’t just about celebrities and it isn’t just about your friends and nonsensical status updates. You can get real time legitimate news on Twitter. You can subscribe to your favorite newspaper, news broadcaster, news broadcasting station, radio stations, and any other type of information outlet. All of these organizations tweet. All of them will tweet at real time speed if they want to compete with one another, which they do. I don’t read the newspaper on a daily basis when I am at school. Sometimes I will go home on the weekends and my parents will try to talk to me about current events or politics and I can’t keep up. I started to feel inadequate and like I was living in some sort of bubble that wasn’t affected by current events. With twitter I have subscribed to newspapers, politicians, and even the President. I will have current updates at my fingertips without even having to search for a newspaper. In a world where most news sources are going to online only instead of print journalism, they will rely on Twitter more than ever. I think it says something when our President Barack Obama updates his twitter on a regular basis.

 

With this array of convincing reasons, why wouldn’t you get a Twitter? Even if you don’t want to tweet everyday, you can still keep up with the people, places, and things of your world. I urge you to ask yourself, “why not tweet?” If knowledge, charity, entertainment, and cathartic release aren’t enough to get you there, let me know. Twitter will open your eyes to a whole other world of immediate news updates and information at a speed you would never guess possible. So go ahead, make a Twitter account, you won’t be sorry.