EOTO: Twitter

 I am a very avid user of twitter, and so are 330 million other people. I use twitter everyday, sometimes to check whats trending, see the top news stories, or just to laugh. While I haven't thought much about the history of twitter until now, I have thought a lot about the pros and cons of twitter. Most people either love twitter or they hate it. But whether you like the website or not, the history of it is pretty impressive.



The History

    In 2004 Odeo, a podcasting service, was started. This company, Odeo, is the parent company of Twitter. After Odeo failed, the company asked some of its newer workers to pitch in ideas for a new program. Dorsey talked about the idea of a text messaging app that could be used to send status updates to friends. The idea of twitter was then born in February of 2006. Less than a month later the website was officially set up on March 21st.

    Twitter became its own company in April of 2007. The famous hashtag was introduced four months later. Between this time Twitter continued to get a lot of investors, but as I do not know much about the business world I can not explain it in an understandable manner. Surprising, the first Twitter user to hit one million was Ashton Kutcher. Because of this, twitter was mentioned on The Oprah Show (leading to a surge in new users). Twitter announced promoted tweets, allowing businesses to use the service as a marketing tactic, in 2010.

    Twitter acquired Vine, a social media app that focused on short clips, in 2012. By this time twitter has more than 200 million active users. Google allows tweets to show up in search results in 2015. Vine is discontinued in 2016 and the word count is increased from 140 characters to 280 in 2018. You can read a more detailed history of Twitter on this website.




Pros and Cons  

    Half of American Twitter users say they use it for news. This is such a big deal because it allows a whole new demographic to become involved in the news. Even if someone opens twitter just for fun, they will be exposed to the explore page with the news front and center. Not only did twitter allow more people to care about the news, it also changed what actually made the news. Just this week this story about zoom technical difficulties went viral on twitter. Now, twitters explore page has multiple tabs including covid-19, the typical trending, news, sports, and entertainment tabs. Now you can focus on news or entertainment, but in earlier stages the two were combined leading to some interesting discoveries. Not only do more people get exposed to news, but the news comes a lot quicker. It is a lot easier to write a 280 word tweet before writing an article. This has led to a lot of misconceptions and inconsistencies. Sometimes the wrong information is sent out and then spread through the twitter sphere. This can lead to harmful misinformation.

    With news comes politics, and twitter has had a huge impact on the political sphere. This past election had the largest voter turnout since 1900, this is largely due to the political exposure on social media. Politicians were able to talk directly to the people, they were able to connect in a much more personal way. Twitter allowed users to stay informed, and even put warnings on tweets that may spread misinformation. This caused a lot of controversy however as this led to Donald Trump's account (and many of his supporters) to be removed. While politics was a lot more transparent and vocal this year, they were also aggressive and hateful at some times. People would get death threats, people would post hate speech, and people would argue with the other side constantly.

     Users on twitter were allowed to voice their opinions and bring awareness to important issues in the world. This led to a lot of activism which is really good. On the flip side, a lot of influencers and celebrities (and normal users too) would participate in #hashtagactivism. Hashtag activism is controversial as it has brought awareness but some think it doesn't help. What I mean is someone posting about the glaciers melting but not actually doing anything about it. Personally, I think spreading awareness in anyway is helpful and good. With activist causes also comes haters, which can turn into a pretty violent twitter fight pretty quickly. 

    As a longtime twitter user I have seen all of the above mentioned pros and cons. I have seen the impact that twitter has on politics, but i've also seen the aggressive and harmful speech spread in response. I think twitter is great for finding news, as long as you follow up with a credible news source later. Twitter, while allowing everyone to voice their opinion, is also causing a lot of division between users. However, I have also seen twitter being used in a fun and casual way. I use twitter to check up on my favorite celebrities and talk to my friends. While twitter has its pros and cons, all social media apps and all technologies do as well. I'm excited (and a little nervous) to see how twitter will continue to evolve in the future, and what new apps might be started in response.

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