Is Twitter the new method of communication?

Staff Report | Campus VIBE, Featured

Is Twitter the new method of communication?

By Connor Sheridan || January 27, 2010

Tags: journalism, social media, social networks, Twitter

Is the future of communication 140 characters or less?

Twitter.com, the text message-sized social networking site which emphasizes brief status and news updates as opposed to tagged photos and diverse applications, has grown in bursts since its inception in 2006.

The site is now at 75 million users, according to some reports.

But is that growth going to continue to skyrocket, perhaps threatening the dominance of the Facebook juggernaut? Or will it fizzle out like so many fads before it?

Alan Rudy, a full-time temporary associate professor of sociology, considered using Twitter in his classes last fall. He hoped that students could use it to ask questions during and after class and to keep in communication with him.

“It’s an incredibly flexible tool,” Rudy said. “The more of an exchange you foster between students that’s on topic and informed by the material, the more of it will stick.”

But the class rejected the idea, as very few of his students showed enthusiasm about it.

Rudy believes Twitter will be around for a while, although he doubts it will have as robust a user base this year.

Do you tweet?

Twitter allows users to “follow” other Twitter accounts and combine their updates into one feed, or even using lists of feeds.

The site also counts how many users are following a person’s account and how many lists they are featured in.

Many active Twitter users use applications, such as TweetDeck and Tweetie for iPhone, instead of logging into Twitter.com for more flexibility.

But not everybody is buying into the craze — New Buffalo senior Ben Sorensen said Twitter is even more useless than Facebook.
“It will probably die out,” Sorensen said. “It seems pretty lame, actually. I can’t believe it’s such a craze.”

According to a study by RJMetrics Inc., only 17 percent of all Twitter users used the site in the last month, down more than 70 percent in early 2007.

Sorensen did not mince words about his distaste for the site and social networking in general.

“I feel like it’s full of pretentious, narcissistic (expletive) holes,” he said.

In some cases, keeping up on the news is exactly what students want from Twitter.

Greenville junior Mike Mulholland is one such student and is majoring in online journalism.

While he uses Facebook more often to keep up with friends, Mulholland uses Twitter to stay connected to the world, professionally and personally.

It is how he first learned of the earthquakes in Haiti.

“It’s changing the world, just like Facebook changed the world,” he said.

Twitter is notorious for informing users about news before it breaks on prominent news sites. Examples include the deaths of pop star Michael Jackson and actress Brittany Murphy.

Lori Brost, a professor of journalism, believes the tool is especially essential to those interested in her field.

Brost requires students of her JRN 340: Intro to Online Journalism course to have Twitter accounts and follow several journalists, but she thinks it would be of interest for any study which undergoes rapid developments.

“Right now, I think it’s one of the greatest social media tools we have,” she said.

E-mail the author: Connor Sheridan

This post was written by:

Connor Sheridan - who has written 125 posts on Central Michigan Life.

Connor is the Student Life Editor for Central Michigan Life.

Buddha
These articles have been coming out since 1999. Yes, people communicate using computers, let's move on.
But to be honest, why would anyone want to be so updated with the NEWS? How depressed and hopeless do you want to be?
Jill
Also I think it is popular because lame people actually follow Tila Tequila or other degenerates like her.
Jill
I agree with Ben 100% I find twitter annoying.
Carrie
As a 2003 grad of CMU, my college days are not all that far behind me. And yet, those days were pre twitter, pre facebook, and in all reality, even pre texting. And you know what? I remember living on campus my first two years and being really close to most of the other people who lived on the floor. This was largely in part due to actually having to walk down the hall to other peoples' rooms to ask simple questions. In doing so, I would lo and behold meet other people on the way. It seems this world is a total thing of the past.

Fast forward to a few years later. These years have seen me serve as a RHD, and now, as a PhD student who still has close contact with the student population. No longer do people seem to actually have face to face interaction. No longer do students seem to actually notice the people around them when walking across campus because they are so intently concentrating on their cell phone. No longer can one go to a movie anymore and not expect to hear cell phone text message notifications or be distracted by the lit up phone of nearby people.

People sometimes seem more obsessed with the actual act of texting than they are by the people they are communicating with.

Some of my fondest memories of CMU are the things that made CMU known throughout the Midwest as being one of the friendliest campuses: Say Hey Week, Gentle Friday, etc. I remember having to allot myself 30-45 minutes to do a 15 minute walk across campus because I knew I would run into and converse with several people along the way. It makes me sad to think this way of life may die out in favor of cyber communication.
Thomas Marcetti
Twitter is a great representation of the entire Internet and online movement. It has great potential, but often fails horribly. There has been a great emphasis on the news gathering ability of Twitter, but what scares me about that is the promotion of a medium that seems to encourage irresponsible reporting. Yes Twitter allowed a glimpse into the election riots and police crackdowns in Iran, but as mentioned in the article it also allowed many people to learn of Michael Jackson's death - many hours before he actually died. For me, online journalism places too much emphasis on getting it first and making it flashy, and not enough on making sure facts are right and biases are absent.
Bob Young
A professional communicator (and one time CMU J student), I plugged in to Twitter not long after the miraculous East River plane landing because I saw its potential for instantaneous sharing of news/events. It may be the sharpest tool in the drawer for "citizen journalists." That said, yes, it has its share of morons, but no more so than Faceboo, MySpace or Friendfeed. Even CM Life has a few contributors who should read more and post less. As I have continued to use Twitter I've found it to be extremely helpful in getting my arms around the role of social media in news reporting, marketing, and public relations. And as an added plus, my membership package included a t-shirt that reads: "pretentious, narcissistic (expletive) hole."