Is Twitter the new method of communication?

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.