First Experience Microblogging on Twitter

Twitter has been used beyond socializing and marketing in the instances of the Boston Marathon explosions, the Egyption social media revolution, events in Paris and the Houston rainfall.  In the case of the Boston Marathon explosions, shortly after the attack, many tweets were sent out that were full of false information proving that twitter may be first to get the news but not always the 100% accurate information.  Egyptians using twitter to organize revolutions actually led to people being physically present at a revolution while tweeting that their head and heart were in other places. These events being organized through social media also led to arrests since the information was public.  After the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, more than four million tweets were sent out and the majority of them were in English which shows that twitter connects people from all over the globe. More tweets were sent out in the English language than in French. Celebrities voiced their sympathy for Paris on twitter after these attacks.  These celebrities include, Justin Bieber, Louis Tomlinson, and Niall Horan. In the instance of the mass floods in Houston, people tweeted that they needed help and could not get through to 911. People who tweeted that they were in serious danger received help after their tweets gained popularity and were seen by others who could help. Instead of twitter being used for socializing or marketing people have also used twitter to get the news out there first, organize revolutions, voice their sympathy, and get the help they desperately needed.  Twitter can be used to reach out to people all over the world to gain their political support, share political views, and support one’s favorite politicians. Twitter can also be used an an organizational tool when it comes to keeping in touch with people from all over and reaching out to them for meetings or to let them know the dates of events. Journalistically, twitter can be used to keep a personal journal or journalists can make stories out of celebrity tweets. Over the last twelve months, twitter has been used as a communicator of events.  One event that twitter was successful in spreading was the Jonas Brother’s reunion earlier this year. The Jonas Brothers, who split six years ago, blacked out their twitter icon and announced they were getting back together. The three individual brothers, Kevin, Joe, and Nick, then each changed their personal twitter pictures to ones of the all three of them. Twitter communicated the reunion and was a tool that allowed the entire world to get the news fast. Of course then everyone started retweeting and commenting so the news spread like wildfire which was exactly what the band hoped for.  Another instance where twitter was a successful tool in the past year was when this mom and pop donut shop in Florida opened up but hardly received any business. The shop daughter tweeted about how sad her parents were that their donut place did not bring in much business and so many people retweeted the tweet that the next day, a line was out the door. People pay attention to the tweets out there and some even help when they can. Twitter is constantly used as a wonderful form of communication. Another announcement was made on twitter earlier this week. The popular Disney Channel show, “Even Stevens” is coming out with a reboot called “Even More Stephens”.  This show was announced on twitter by the former stars of the show. Again the nostalgia factor set twitter off with countless retweets and comments. Twitter is a great communication tool because of how easy it is to spread information. For my twitter project, I chose to follow the NCAA March Madness account and UB Men’s Basketball for the two accounts I had interest in because I enjoy college basketball. Every year since I was a kid, I have made a bracket and rooted for my teams to make it to the final four. As I got older, I learned more and more about college basketball and developed a love for certain teams such as UB. My cousins works with UB to market their basketball program so it felt like the perfect fit to follow that twitter account.  My family also loves March Madness and rented out a room at Leo’s in Orchard Park to watch the UB versus Texas Tech game as a large group. I knew following those accounts would be the right ones for me considering I have a lot of knowledge about the topic and my family and I would be following the games closely anyway. For the account that made me uncomfortable, I chose President Donald Trump because I disagree with many of his views and his immature behavior on twitter shocks me. I knew in choosing him, I would at least be interested in the stupidity of his statements. This experience using twitter is a lot different than what I thought blogging to be like. When I thought blogging before, I never would have thought of twitter. This experience showed me that blogging does not have to be extremely long and thought out.  Compared to other social media, I thought twitter was a good fit because of the character limit. There are always people who type way too much for one Facebook post to having a limit was helpful and time saving.