Media Mix

The Twitter craze
It’s fun, but is it useful?

Twitter, the online social networking site that has exploded in popularity in recent years, has sparked debate on the usefulness of the site as well as raised questions about what and how we communicate.

In regard to how we communicate, Twitter actually has a built-in answer: succinctly.  “Tweets” are limited to 140 characters, forcing users to convey their thoughts in bite-sized correspondence.

The “what” question is a little trickier.

Communication is not difficult. It’s simply conveying a thought, want or desire to another. If your friend is standing next to an apple, and you would like that apple, you don’t need to say “My friend, would you be so kind as to reach next to you, pick up that apple and walk it over to me so I may eat it.”

You could simply grunt to get his or her attention, point at the apple then point at yourself to get the same point across.

And even though Twitter allows users to convey a thought instantly to hundreds, even thousands of people across the globe, you’re probably not going to use it to ask your friend for that apple.

Much like the telephone, the importance of the invention is not found in its mundane use, but in the impact of more extreme cases. A phone conversation between friends as they watch the latest episode of Oprah, the world could probably do with out. But the thousands of 911 calls received a day are a different story.

No, nobody needs to know that the childhood friend they haven’t seen in 20 years is having meatloaf for dinner, but as the recent protests in Iran following the nation’s presidential election have show, Twitter does have an important function: conveying information instantly to hundreds or thousands of people.

Whether it is Iranian protesters tweeting on abuses that the tightly-controlled media may not have reported on, or more mundane tasks like tweeting your new phone number to friends and family, Twitter – as well as other online networking sites like Facebook – has a function and is changing the way in which we communicate.

Do you “tweet”?  What are some of the useful or not-so-useful way to use the site?