Date: Monday, August 13, 2007

All a-Twitter!

The latest craze to hit cyberspace is Twitter, the newest facet of the social networking mania sweeping the world.

Twitter is slightly different from the many other social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, in that it is a mix between the traditional model of these sites, and instant messaging. Twitter allows users to send messages to their friends using less than 140 characters keeping their social network informed of their current location, thoughts and activities. The whole aim of Twitter is to send short, informative messages to your social group. When the site was founded in March 2006 it didn’t have a huge following, but now less than 18 months later, it numbers American presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama amongst its members, who use the site to keep their supporters up-to-date on their campaign, and to deliver their key policy beliefs. Whilst some Twittering is seemingly absurd, such as messages informing people what users had for breakfast, others are highly interesting, such as reviews of products and links to websites with an accompanying assessment.

Twitter was set up by start-up company Obvious Corp and began life as a research and development project inside Odeo Inc., but quickly grew to be used on the international stage. Twitter is just one of the many micro-blogging sites such as Jaiku, Pownce and Frazr which have come to prominence recently. These sites all allow you to send brief messages to your circle of friends. Whilst some argue that micro-blogging is a waste of time, its many supporters disagree, saying that the important discussions that can result from it are testament to its intrinsic worth. In the future a more concrete business plan is to be developed by the creators of the site, allowing them to fully exploit their massive consumer base, but for the moment Twitter is just enjoying its enormous success and exploring their options.

Source: BBC News