Since the time Internet has evolved, it has lent the world some terms that have become buzzwords on the Web like, Web 2.0. Twitter has been a buzzword for the last two years.
Now what on earth is Twitter and why has it caught the fancy of millions of netizens lately?
Microblogging is a new form of communication in which users share information through short messages not more than 200 characters. Twitter is the leader in microblogging service.
On a warm Sunday afternoon, three software engineers Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams during their day dreaming sessions brainstormed an idea. An idea that combined the best of instant messaging, text messaging, and blogging. The idea talked about delivering short updates from anyone to anywhere on the planet. They got along together and implemented this idea to form Twitter. And the rest is history.
Today Twitter boasts of more than 5 million users. Biggies like Cisco, Jet Blue and Sun Microsystems use Twitter service to provide product and service related information. Presidential candidate Barrack Obama made use of Twitter for his public campaign.
But how is it different from blogging? How did it get its niche?
I have been an ardent blogger since 4 years. And took some time to get in terms of this new phenomenon. But when I scrapped below the surface, I learnt, both weren’t competitors, but had their own user base. Twitter is very natural to adopt for bloggers who have no time on their hands to seriously post, but can still tweet when they have 30 seconds of free time. Also another advantage of Twitter is 90% of Twitter interactions are not made via the Twitter website, but via mobile text message, Instant Messaging, or a desktop application such as Twitterific.
Compared to regular blogging, microblogging fulfills immediacy of communication. By encouragingshorter posts, it allows users to translate thoughts as and when into contentwithout investing lots of time. This is also oneof its main differentiating factors from blogging in general.The second important difference is the frequency of update.On average, a prolific blogger may update his blog once a few days. But a microblogger may post several updates in a single day.
All in all Twitter is not a whim of a disillusioned developers, but a potent medium for a whole lot of people to stay updated with the pulse of things around.
No comments:
Post a Comment