Student Editor
In the hustle and bustle of today’s news and communication, journalists are presented with two constant themes: a need for brevity and a need for speed. The Internet has been the most constructive vehicle in meeting such criteria but it is the tools within it that have left online journalist anything but speechless.
Blogs, v-logs, tumblrs, Second Lives are all novel and creative tools in online communication. It wasn’t until a visit to our class from Steve Rubel, blogger for Edelman PR firm, that we heard of the latest and most innovative tool yet: Twitter.com.
Twitter is another form of posting news and blogging on the Internet but this site has found its niche. Twitter.com gives a new meaning to brevity and speed since bloggers can post on it not only through the website and by instant messaging but via text as well.
The site allows individuals to post news, comments, or random thoughts at any moment from their cell phone in 144 characters or less. Twitter.com has roughly 100,000 members and was about to meet what could be its most conservative critics yet: our online journalism class, Journalism 80.
Although Twitter.com has found a niche in online journalism, its actual usability and innovativeness left the Journalism 80 class torn. Half of the class felt that Twitter is an excellent way of communicating with the masses and sharing a common goal and agenda with a community. On the other side of the spectrum, students felt that Twitter was just another name for the same old instant messaging and blogging tools. The site may actually live up to its reputation of being the quickest, briefest online blogging yet, but proves to be a work in progress. The feature that makes this site a cut above the rest is it’s the ability to post via text at any given moment, but its most important feature is also the sites most unreliable and dysfunctional element.
Twitter Steps up Instant Messaging
Twitter is a great tool for small businesses that have employees working on the road or off location. For a person without such occupational responsibility, it may be more effective and easier to get one’s point across by using AOL Instant Messenger or basic email. However, in large groups like a company or a class, communication between 10-15 people isn't easy to accomplish without a program like Twitter. Overall, it's another smart program that people can utilize.
--By Chris Vaccaro
Twitter Destined for Stardom
Twitter offers a service that provides many different and unusual takes on blogging. An important part of this product is the extremely short postings, limited to 144 characters. Users can post Twitter entries and read other’s entries, which is standard today in blogging. If you're not familiar with Twitter, it's pretty easy to get a grip on it -- think instant messaging with a group. You post a short message via IM, through the Twitter website or other utility and other Twitter users who are "following" you will see your message. Some have called Twitter a form of microblogging and that is probably a helpful way of looking at this service.
Most regulars of the site describe Twitter newbies as being somewhat under-whelmed by the site. Plenty of people feel that you should persevere somewhat in order to reach a positive mindset of what you just did.
With all that being said, Twitter seems destined for stardom -- it has a rapidly growing community of users who have proved they will continually spend hours every day posting messages.
Twitter said it had roughly 100,000 members as of late March, and membership has been doubling every three weeks. Twitter members are exchanging an astonishing number of updates every hour. Nothing looks like it's going to get in the way of Twitter's rise to the top in the world of online messaging and blogging.
--By Maggie Biunno
Can’t Teach an Old Blogger New Tricks
It may seem like a harmless and quick way to blog, but Twitter tools dangerously resemble the stalking that can be achieved by browsing through a mini-feed on Facebook. However, instead of the website doing the stalking for you, individuals broadcast what they are doing in 140 characters or less, whenever they please. And forget about the restraints of not always having a computer around -- Twitter can be accessed via mobile phone text message or instant message, as well as on the Twitter web site.
Twitter could be a great tool for business partners that need to keep in touch. But, e-mail on PalmPilots and Blackberries provide a similar way to communicate -- without telling the whole world. Or, why not just send a text message directly?
During a test of the site, a timely message did not post via text message and the Twitter screen name remained off-line each of three attempts (on three different days) to activate it. When it finally showed up, days later, the Web site had already proven to be the most reliable way to post.
While Twitter can alert a member of friends' posts by cellphone, the costs can add up -- unless you have a text-messaging plan that can be wasted on posts.
The amount of random information of friends and strangers streaming through could be entertaining when bored, but if I know whom I want to communicate with, I would use a different method.
--By Thomas Palermo
Twitter Gives Journalist a Voice
Want your voice to be heard? What better way than a public forum like Twitter? It offers a citizen journalism forum in an AIM setting.
--By Kara Meekins
Quick Easy–in, Easy-out
Twitter is better than Second Life, and I often find myself comparing it to MySpace. I view Twitter as a mini version of My Space because the writer can still keep in contact with friends and family spanning the globe without all the unnecessary drivel that pastes the rest of the screen. Quick. Easy-in. And easy-out.
-- By Ryan McCord
Twitter Falls Short
I don't believe Twitter is all that revolutionary, compared to other Internet sites of the same capacity. If I didn't have to use it for class, I would never be on the site again. I am not nearly as impressed with it as I was with Second Life.
--By Meredith Frost
T.M.I. -- Too Much Information
What makes Twitter different than a standard blog? Twitter is a writer’s thoughts sent via text or instant message, in addition to the web. Writers can now keep friends and colleagues updated on their every move, minute by minute. Personally, I feel Twitter is creepy. I don’t need to know that John takes his break at 9:17 a.m. on Tuesday.
--By Lisa Bain
A Bumpy Test Drive for Twitter
Twitter lets me delete my ‘friends’ easily, with a convenient “d friend" next to them all. Unfortunately, the site doesn't let me add people as easily, since I don't think I can see half my classmates, who joined the service to test it out.
--By Garrett Frey
Want Fries with That?
Most users of the Twitter messaging network post random, often funny, trivialities. For example, a recent message by Julien Simeoni wrote about paying €2 for a bacon cheeseburger in Dublin.
--By Kayla Walker
What You Want, When You Want It
Twitter reveals a random pattern of updates: members post blogs about current events; the day’s breaking story, and the latest controversial issues.
--By Remy Melina
Twitter Broadens Blogging Bounds
Twitter can become addictive with its random comments and worldwide exposure. The site allows its users to view comments about virtually anything from people all over the world. Users comment in many languages. People tend to leave comments about their daily duties like where they are going and what they're doing. The most fascinating part is that users can see how people in other parts of the world live. If written in English, one can noticeably see the daily actions of someone living in China or Europe.
The site goes beyond what we're used to. It stretches across the world and gives us new ways of spending time on the Internet.
-- By Michelle Sobhraj
Business in the Front, Party in the Back
Although Twitter is a useful tool to keep in touch with friends and family, it is also a valuable tool for journalists and others to gather quickly in the masses with the same agenda in mind.
-- By Max Landau
Stranded on the Information Superhighway
Twitter.com brings fast paced communication to the public. However the technology is not all that reliable. Not all posts (whether made from an internet browser, AIM, or a cell phone) actually make it on to the site to be published on the Internet. If the posts don’t make t on the site, speed means nothing.
-- By Audra Kincaid
A Community Builder for the Online World
Twitter is a blogging website that gives people the opportunity to be involved and have a voice in the interactive web community. It is unlike any other site that I have ever heard of or been involved in. People post weekly, daily and even hourly tidbits of information that usually express the person’s state of mind. Originally, when I started using Twitter I was one of those individuals who posted what I was doing at that very moment. But, what I learned was that I wasn’t taking full advantage of the essence of this website, which is to give some information that isn’t just about me, but rather about something I could contribute to this interactive community. Other bloggers’ were posting links of articles that they had found online, while I was talking about my plane landing. Although, I should be more technologically savvy, I am sad to say I still have a lot to learn. But doesn’t everybody.? The problem is keeping up and not being left behind.
-- By Juliette Pariente-Cohen
A New Way to Say the Same Old Thing
With the advent of Myspace, FaceBook and AIM, Internet technologies that allow people from all over the world to post and maintain contact with each other are all the rage. One that seems to particularly be taking off is Twitter, a site used by professionals, such as Steve Rubel, a blogger for the Edelman PR firm, as much as it is by individuals looking to keep in contact with relatives overseas, make new friends, chat amongst old friends, or pursue a romantic or personal relationship.
However, for a website that might be set up in a different fashion, it seems rather ordinary. Like Myspace, Twitter allows one to make their group and their personal account private or public, and post to other public accounts and groups. One interesting thing about Twitter, however, that separates it from some of the other web pages like it, is the ability to send updates to one's phone in the form of a text message. Twitter could evolve to be the news distribution format of the future.
Brief pieces created by citizen journalists can be sent to cell phones, promoting the need for journalists of today to take a lesson in brevity. As for now, however, Twitter provides Internet users with yet another reason to avoid making physical contact with people, and head for a computer instead -- a new place, if you will, to say the same old thing.
-- By Bonnie McKasty
