So... I tweeted...

Imagine a lone bird twittering and tweeting to any other member of his species that might be within range of his call... His message. He seeks someone to tweet to about good feeding grounds, the fact that he is moulting a bit early this season, where he could find a good mate or maybe just to express how wonderful the sun feels on his little birdie breast on that particular day.  It is in this way Twitter seeks to connect friends, family members and perfect strangers that share similar interests, across the globe.  

Twitter is a social media platform --- a micro blogging service --- that allows people utilising the service to update their statuses or views on important, or sometimes random, topics using short messages or “tweets” of no more than one hundred and forty (140) characters. According to Alexa Internet, Inc. (www.alexa.com), Twitter is among the ten top visited websites on the Internet and is recorded as having five hundred million users as at April 2012. It allows you not only to communicate in a text-based format, but lets you post pictures and videos as well, thus allowing information to be communicated relatively effectively in a small space.

My week on Twitter, though brief, was truly a learning experience. I explored the site on the few opportunities that I got and noticed the freedom with which people expressed themselves. The site can be used for a number of purposes besides keeping up with friends and family members separated by distance. Many “causes” are fought in this sphere, e.g. GoTeamTheodore, and many businesses utilize this medium as a way of advertising and marketing their products. In these ways Twitter can indeed be an asset; making cyberspace, and by extension, the world a little easier to manoeuvre. It also gives a voice to those whom --- without this social media outlet --- would otherwise remain voiceless.

Below is a video that explains Twitter in very simple terms (although not capturing fully the potential of the medium). Although it should have been included in my first post, I think here it can act as encouragement for those who may have been “Twitter-shy”.

My journey through social media continues … Our next stop?

Stay tuned to find out!