Wednesday, January 15, 2014

twitterbreviary, a late snapshot, in early January 2014

To follow twitter, one has to access the internet, pull up the website, pick a user name and register an 'account.' There were some basic questions when I signed up as an end user, some setting choices, etc, and I was 'on twitter' and could 'create my own tweets', each of only 140 characters. There are millions, maybe billions of other accounts and they can create tweets too. And do. Yes, they do, all over the world. Last year twitter became publicly traded and since December its stock has an upward trend. Full disclosure: I don't own any twitter stock but I use the platform. We'll see if it keeps going up and, if the current way users try to make money off the e-message platform succeeds, then its future looks rosy. But advertisers and big corporations say they can generate and guide internet user traffic to sites, and products, and advertisements, which not incidentally, is as viable a vehicle for trade as newspapers used to be.

Users (interchangeable with 'tweeter') tweet for any number of reasons and purposes.The image of a user with a modern smartphone tweeting their missives to the world, can be seen in homes, on subway platforms, war zones, waiting rooms, at work and on sitcoms. Some chat with others, or tell jokes, tell what/where they eat, where they are, what they think. I am very much a novice at it and don't claim to have any special knowledge about it, yet, or as to the effects this may have on social communications, psychology, self-or-other-awareness, or large groups of following consumer/users. But the effects and knock-on effects, seem fairly profound right now, as far as technological advances go.

There is lots to talk about here, but this is just a few examples of how I use it these days in a short series last Friday to GOP Majority Leader in the US House of Representatives, Rep Eric Cantor from the Commonwealth of Virginia. I use these tweets to him as examples, because it shows the direct access one can now have with members, even top members in Congress. Those, a majority who have joined the ranks of twitter, apparently see it as a useful communications tool. So it goes both ways.


The form of the 140 character limit -  a tweet's one defining characteristic - forces compromises on the written form itself. Words get shortened, abbreviated, often vowels taken out with only syllabic consonants remaining, all just to fit the sense of the idea, or part of an idea into the length of a full tweet.
After the proliferation of twitter, applicationss were made to enable easier insertion of internet addresses into the length of a tweet, by shortening them with deciding algorithms, independent of the user or 'tweeter'. This also allows for the insertion of links, pictures, videos etc. into the body of the tweet and still have room for commentary, other links, etc.
To 'follow twitter', the user is actually 'following' other users, a choice given as a user with lists of the millions or billions of other users. And each user is also followed by other users, other tweeters.
Multiple recipients are each given an '@' before their user or account name. Users can also 'follow' as many other users, who are themselves followers of still more users, etc.
Basic to many twitter users is the 'retweet', where another tweet is simply copied and resent by the 'tweeter'.
Another is the 'embed tweet', which I finally figured out how to do in a blog, today (see above).
The '#', called a 'hashtag' and now synonymous with the symbol that is still used to designate 'number' is a grouping mechanism specific to the twitter platform. One can search terms, names, hashtags on the twitter platform. The use of hashtags has grown to do a number of things, but typically acts as a topic sorting tool.

Oh, one more, from last night's Last Night w/ Jimmy Fallon show:


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