Evolution of Twitter.

In the last Media 1 tutorial, we discussed different forms of media we use and how we use them. When were asked to raise our hands if we used twitter , only a few hands raised. I personally don’t use twitter. I had one in high school and used it sporadically. I have a few friends who use twitter and LOVE it. I’ve found its similar to how some people love Tumblr. In the way that both tend to be very community-based. While Tumblr tends to focus around fandoms; Twitters seems to vary a bit more.

An example of what I mean by ‘community-based’ would be how my best friend, Olivia uses twitter. She uses it as a blog specifically to do with her Musical Theatre (MT) career. She uses twitter to send links to videos of herself, keep up with news to do with shows, and to communicate with MT peers and professionals.

I have been tempted to use to twitter as a way to keep up with News. Which is essentially how I feel the majority use twitter nowadays. They are able to ‘follow’ their favorite news sources whether that be The Guardian, CNN, or TMZ and receive all of their tweets (generally their headlines as notifications to their phone or it will be on twitter’s RSS feed.

Another big way people use twitter now is for customer service. My brother complains to Comcast (cable company) via twitter so much I wouldn’t be surprised if he was on a first-name basis with the person who runs the account. I experienced how useful twitter can be as communication between a customer and service provider first-hand yesterday.

Just think how upset I was when I tried to access my Spotify account and was told I could not log in as I did not have an account (I have a premium account, thank you very much!). In the error below the ‘forgot password link’ had another link to connect with them. This took me to they’re twitter page where I immediately saw their latest tweet:

I was almost immediately given communication that there was an error in fact, with the system, rather than my account.

Twitter has evolved from a site meant for personal ‘micro-blogging’ and communication with pals to a site that is now mostly used for communication with organizations and corporations/businesses. This evolution is similar to what was described as the ‘school girl effect’ in a previous lecture; in which a platform will be used by a culture in a very different way than what the creators may have expected.