The meaning and use of Twitter

Twitter can be used in different ways. I will give a short overview and write about the possibilities and limitations inherent in this platform.

The generalities

The limit of 140 characters per tweet has lead to a new art in the use of wording, grammar and abbreviations. It´s also interesting to compare the content you can put in one tweet by using different languages. I find it most pleasant to read a statement made in a single tweet and not broken up in several ones. Of course that´s not always possible but I try to keep my statements within this limit. Having said that, I have to admit that I´ve always been a fan of keeping things short and to a point.

Tags are a great way to follow broadcasts about an event and a good tool to shorten tweets. I wish I could use them in real life, too.

The publicity of the things you tweet can lead to interesting conversations when people you didn´t expected to, suddenly chime in.

The possibility to send direct messages as well as to protect your account gives you the possibility to use several degrees of publicity for your messages.

Social network

The possibility to describe yourself on your account page and the suggestions whom you might want to follow can lead to the creation of a network of people who share one or more common interests. The people belonging to this network will often be quite diverse regarding their location, culture, life-style and political views. This seems to be different from other social networks such as Facebook for example, where the people added as friends first and foremost tend to be people you know in real-life like friends, relatives, colleagues and so on.

The form of communication in this aspect of Twitter tends to be dialogical. The tweets sent are either directed at someone in special or your followers in general but more often than not you expect them to be part of a conversation through replies or at least retweets or favouritings. The content ranges from very personal messages to general information you think might be of interest for your followers. Taken together, this aspect of twitter can build the core for a more or less close group of people, most of whom you’ll probably never meet, for discussing various issues, letting people know about your thoughts as well as your lunch, and learning about the lives of others.

What has been expressed repeatedly on the net is the fact that people use to tell things on Twitter that they wouldn´t on Facebook. As the reason for this I tend to see the fact that you normally don´t personally know the people you´re talking to on Twitter and the fact that you can use pseudonyms here and any “confessions” you make can´t be directly traced back to you if you take care of that.

Another consequence is that the people you “know” on twitter don´t see you the same way as the people you know personally. When you ask for advice, people you know irl will include in their answer, consciously or not, all the things they know about you and the things they have experienced with you. They will see you through a certain set of glasses, if you will, and thus exclude answers they hold to be unsuited for you. They may also think about the consequences their advice will have for them. People on Twitter will know far less about you and only things you decided to let them know. Advice given by them will be more objective, but on the other hand also much more general and less suited for your specific situation and personality.

What you have to bear in mind when dealing with people on Twitter is that everything they tell you could be fake. Another problem might be that you will probably never meet them in real life. Both things are of no consequence as long as you only want to talk about shared interests in music or films, but it can lead to troubles if you get too attached to them. Keep yourself aware of the fact that in most cases, a conversation is the only thing you will have with these people. A good advice is to always keep yourself grounded in real life and to see your virtual life as an addition to that rather than a substitute for it.

Announcements

Another way to use Twitter is a mostly monological form of communication. A tweeter sends messages to his followers without much regard to replies. This method is used by celebrities (people with more followers than they could possibly pay attention to) and companies or organizations. It´s a good tool for the marketing of products as well as ideas. On the part of the followers though, this often leads to exaggerated hopes.

In theory, twitter gives you the possibility to directly send messages to famous people, but with a probability of 99.9% these messages will simply be ignored. Even if he/she gives you a followback, that will almost always mean he/she will follow so many people that he/she won´t be able to read all the tweets in the timeline. So if you follow an idol of yours, be prepared that this will be no more than a one-way street of communication.

Conclusion

Before getting started on Twitter you should ask yourself what you expect from your stay there and what you can and shouldn´t do to achieve that.

-         Is the number of your followers really important to you?

-         What does it say about you, when you follow or get followed by hundreds or even thousands of people?

-         Do you want to simply read/hear/watch what others post or do you want to have conversations with people?

-         Are the things you post really interesting for your followers?

-         Think twice before you reveal personal information on a public platform as this.