. Social networks

Twitter

Introduction

In a bid to accept technological advancements, the term social networking has become inevitable and has to be embraced. Social networks have greatly accelerated their place towards transforming lives as they have brought out an easy way of communication. Whether at in our homes or mobile phones, they have brought in varied changes on how communication takes place. Twitter is online social networking web service and a micro-blogging service that makes it possible for its users to send and read messages that are text based that contain a limited number of characters of approximately 140 (Peterson, 2012). These messages are known as tweets and are usually displayed on ones profile. This is a way of building up a social network and gets connected to the right people. It is one of the leading social networking sites on the web where the users can subscribe to other users tweets and this is known as following and those who subscribe are known as followers. It is a miniature blog for people who want a blog but do not want a blog. It is often described as a cross between blogging and instant messaging.

It is also a great tool that can be used to communicate a message to a group of people. It can therefore be used differently by different people for instance it can be used by family top keep in touch, a company to coordinate its business activities, a writer,musician,actor,leader to build up a fan base or even the media to keep people informed. It is a useful tool as a social network for people in most of daily functions such as business in that markets can stay in touch with customers through twitter, communication this is enables social connection with family members or friends and learning.

There is great knowledge on using twitter as a platform for successful business. Some people are go through twitter in their daily lives as customers to buy products and they are in support of company brands or their products by buying them or giving suggestions since they can openly communicate with companies about their requirements. Leveraging twitter gives customers the ability to take part that potentially makes an impact such that the customers stay in touch with their famous companies or similar companies that use same brand names.

Twitter creates a neighborly atmosphere for friendly communication for its users and provides a high level of communication between friends and family all round the world. This communication can be one on one, one to many or many to many. The various social options of the user profile in twitter help people to communicate with each other in far areas. Twitter members can communicate privately through sending messages or publicly with writing on friends’ wall or finding and adding new friends or even sending friend requests to new friends. On twitter there is freedom to speak all kinds of subjects.

Twitter as an educational tool based on some experimental and literature can be viewed in the following aspects; all twitter users and students in particular can use twittering in classes or outside to learn more. Twitter can also be used as a platform to get answers by students as they can post questions even as they engage in other classroom activities. Twitter can also offer students with other opportunities linked to the course they are taking or discussing other different kinds of asynchronous online discourse. There can also be collaborations across schools and countries. Twitter can also be use as a tool for assessing opinions, finding ideas for faster interaction it is a useful tool for academic setting about a given topic. It is also a way for learning about library events like new books, journals and articles.

Twitter has been a great influence on the way people communicate in the modern society. It has brought a great revolution in the way communication is done in the modern society. It has amplified communication and made it ubiquitous. It provides the society with infrastructure that expands people’s social circles. Communication amongst peers, families, governments and companies is an essential part of the society. These changes are felt through the following ways; Twitter has altered the speed at which communication can take place. It has made communication instantenious.This is regardless of the geographical area where the parties are located; it might even be opposite ends of the globe. Tweets can be written in a matter of seconds and seen almost immediately they are updated. The information in the tweets can reach the person they intend to almost immediately. It has changed the way people communicate as people no longer wait days to receive news. People value quick hits that allow them to capture only important information and quickly move on. It has hence made communication instantaneous and makes people get connected more.

Twitter has greatly increased the frequency through which communication can be done. This is because twitter is a social network that is easily accessible. This means that people can communicate frequently. Twitter can be accessed anywhere anytime of the day and hence a great way of increasing communication between different parties. This constant need for communication that twitter creates has led to people feeling as if they can communicate anywhere. Twitter has also increased communication without human contact has led to some uncomfortable etiquette issues in both online and offline spaces. This may include twitter members addressing what is socially acceptable to know about each other when they meet in the real world. Twitter has also made communication more visual and through this has attracted the attention spans of people through pictures, videos and info graphics.

This has also lead to a decrease in communication using other methods such as text messages, phones and emails. This has led to telecommunication companies to change their structure of mobile phones that will enable the buyers to access twitter. This has led to people not to use their phones to communicate through voice calls but through twitter by tweets (Sherman, 2010).

Twitter has implications on both written and oral communications. Twitter has made an irreversible impact on the way people write. This is because there is the urge to be more concise while writing. Twitter has a 140 character limit; people often wondered how they could convey a message that is meaningful in very few words. Twitter has pushed people to get into the essence of what one intends to say. This means that it is not necessary to write in full sentences or paragraphs to have an impact according to twitter. There is also the use of different spellings and abbreviations this includes TTYL which means Talk To You Later. Twitter users are not necessarily spelling things incorrectly. They are effectively speaking an entirely new language (Peterson, 2012).

Twitter has affected spoken communication in that it has made people more revealing in business and personal communications. The information given out is not necessarily considered as too much information. Twitter has also made people antisocial when it comes to face to face interactions. People spend most of their time glued to their mobile phones reading or writing tweets and they do this in public places or forums. This can be considered as antisocial behavior. Tweeters has an impact in the way people speak publicly since most people can use some phrases or terms or trending topics that are doing rounds on twitter to pass some information (Sherman, 2010).

The statistics carried out for the number of twitter users and other methods of communication shows that, time spent on social networks has risen to 82% across the world, and it will still increase given that technology continues emerge creating rooms for newer social networks. The statistics taken in the early 2012 indicates that, the Twitter users averagely spend more than five hours while online chatting with friends as compared to 2008 when users were clocking for less than three hours on the site (Pring, 2012). The audience users of twitter increases year-over-year leading to an estimated number of over 300 million this is because twitter site is known to be in the competition for attracting visitors than other social sites such as MySpace and LinkedIn who realized their declines in unique visitors.

The statistical research carried out in 2010 shows that, the number of Twitter users’ increase over and over again changing the way of communication both in written, spoken and verbal communication. Twitter provides users with ability of sharing information as they post their status that includes news, jokes, and events. Twitter is a social element for communicating and keeping up to date with what friends are up to as well as their whereabouts. The use of twitter has various advantages to their users as a means of communication in that, when tweeting with one another, people get to know one another better making the acquaintances to becomes mates, it promotes togetherness creating new friends as they connect with other different people to share similar common interests and opinions that comes all across the world.

When sharing information, Twitter users are comfortable of doing so in different ways; they can share the information through spoken, written and verbal communication. The statistics reveals that the average twitter user has about 126 followers and tweets the links achieving 1.17% click through rate. 40% of the users happen not to tweet anything while 0.05% of the total twitter populations normally attract 50% of attention on the channel. The statistics also show that the twitter users send over a billion tweets in 72 hours having more than 140 million active users, and 340 million people tweets every day (Pring, 2012).

The twitter users normally celebrate democratization of different information sharing as well as taking it to cast their voices. It is true that, the art and science of engaging to other people are measured by the ability of connecting with them for greater durations at deeper time levels; however, it is not usually as easy as it is thought of, because the competition for attention of people is very substantial and hence it requires an increased sense of intelligence and awareness to conceptualize the creativity that captivate people hoped to be reached. This is so different with a case when one activates the social web along with inciting the consequential action that is measured and memorable because twitter helps in defining and shaping the experiences which can increase affinity or that can simply earn the attention (Peterson, 2012).

Conclusion

How much the social networking such as twitter has become the new trend in the workplace such as analyzing the profiles of employees as well as encouraging efficient interaction between people, it has on the other hand contributed to other negative impacts in and outside the organization. Using twitter most of the time can have a negative influence on the worker productivity; the employees who are twitter users may tend to waste their valuable time while tweeting and also can use it to attack the reputation of the company. Conversely, when social media is excessively used in the wrong way, it may have serious detrimental outcomes on both physical healths of the individuals as well as on their mental health.

References

Online Conference On Networks and Communities (2012), How twitter has changed the way of communication and collaboration of people as a social network. Retrieved from; http://networkconference.netstudies.org/2011/05/how-twitter-has-changed-the-way-of-communication-and-collaboration-of-people-as-a-social-network/

Sherman, A. (2010). How Social Media is Affecting the Way We Speak and Write — Tech News and Analysis . GigaOM . Retrieved October 19, 2012, from http://gigaom.com/2010/04/28/how-social-media-is-affecting-the-way-we-speak-and-write/

Peterson, N. (2012). Social Media’s Effect on Communication : The Grady Journal. The Grady Journal. Retrieved October 19, 2012, from http://www.gradyjournal.com/?p=6337

Pring, C. (2012). 99 New Social Media Stats for 2012 | The Social Skinny. The Social Skinny: social media stuff without the fluff. Retrieved October 19, 2012, from http://thesocialskinny.com/99-new-social-media-stats-for-2012/

Media, D., & Zeiger, S. (n.d.). The Disadvantages of Social Networking in the Workplace | Chron.com. Small Business – Chron.com. Retrieved October 19, 2012, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvantages-social-networking-workplace-21064.html