Tweet Tweet

If someone asked you a year ago your thoughts on Twitter, I am pretty certain many of you wouldn't know what I was talking about. That changed when a presidential candidate began tweeting (yes, when you use Twitter the results are tweets). That candidate is now our president elect, and he continues to use Twitter as his primary means of communication with the American public. We will probably hear a lot more about Twitter, and presidential tweets, over the next four years, and I thought TR Times readers might be interested in learning more about Twitter, and how and when to use it.

To begin with, Wikipedia defines Twitter as

 "…an online news and social networking service where users post and read short … messages called 'tweets'." 

Twitter can be accessed through its website, twitter.com, or by the Twitter app on a smartphone or tablet. To effectively use Twitter, users must register with a user name and password — more about that in next week’s column. Twitter users, estimated at over one billion worldwide, utilize the service to post short messages, capped at 140 characters, that can be read by anyone. 

According to an article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 2009, Jack Dorsey, one of the original developers of Twitter and its current CEO, explained the origin of the name:

 ...we came across the word 'twitter' and it was just perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information,' and 'chirps from birds'. And that's exactly what the product was.

Twitter users can read almost everything that is posted on the service, and by selecting subjects they are most interested — such as: news and politics; sports; pop culture; celebrities and people of influence — Twitter will begin delivering tweets in the specific areas of interest. A Twitter user can choose to follow a particular individual or institution, and receive all relevant tweets. As of Thursday, December 29, singer Katy Perry has 95 million Twitter followers, President Barak Obama has over 80.3 million, LeBron James has 33.5 million, and President-elect Trump has 18.1 million. Institutions also have followers. The New York Times has 32.5 million, Fox News has 12.3 million, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have 557,000.

From the beginning, Twitter seemed like a platform for people to share their stream-of-conscience thoughts with the world, hoping that someone, somewhere, would find them interesting.This idea is given validity when you read news reports of a public figure’s late night tweets complaining that they did not like the manner in which they were portrayed on a comedy show. Personally, I have never understood the desire to follow every pronouncement made by any one individual, and for this reason, I have made very little use of Twitter since I registered with the service a few years ago. However, I have recently found Twitter to be a useful vehicle for contacting, and getting quick results, from customer service representatives. 

Last month Eddie and I had an early morning flight out of San Diego on our return trip to Florida. I wanted to find out how early Southwest Airlines and the TSA checkpoints opened at the airport, and I could not find the information online. I sent a tweet to the San Diego International Airport, and within minutes a representative tweeted me an answer. The representative even went so far as to double check her information and send me an update about an hour later. Rarely have I had such outstanding, and personal, customer service.

In next week’s OnMouseClick I will discuss some of the other ways that Twitter can be a useful tool, outline the procedure for creating a Twitter account, sending and receive tweets. You can read more about Twitter here.