When the word “tweet” is spoken, most of us no longer think of birds chirping. We now think of freedom of expression and personal thought filtered through social media. This is none other than the infamous twitter. Twitter has become the primary social media for college students, as Facebook is slowly fading out and more for an older crowd. With the updated and user-friendly set up of twitter, it is no longer used only to connect to celebrities and their where-abouts. Twitter also helps us see what is on our friends minds and often times complete strangers that we wish were close enough to be our friends. I know my Twitter is linked to students I see around campus, but don’t necessarily know. Often through the communication of “tweeting” we can establish virtual relationships.
In addition to these social media friendships, Twitter has been a large news source. Similar to past days where news was mainly passed via conversation, rather than newspapers, radio, and television, Twitter spreads current events through tweets. Twitter has a link labeled as “Discover.” This allows users to literally discover news and current events. Even better, it is tailored to the person’s interests. If the user usually tweets about technology or phones, a story of a phone update like the iOS6 Apple technology would appear in their Discover link. Also, general stories, like national and worldwide news would be found through twitter.
I know many that Twitter is their main source of news. That could because of the convenience and quality. We can find out about news stories via a website we already use, then tweet about it to make others aware of what we have just learned. It may be sad, but a quick, summarized story is what most of us want. We like gossip styled news. Will Twitter and other social media become our next source of news? Even businesses are starting to have Twitter accounts to connect their users with quick information about their company. The twitter symbol appears almost everywhere, I just question how long before it is the new source of information or something even better comes along.