Image URL: http://mashable.com/2012/09/22/twitter-ads-small-business/
Are you a twitterer? Do you own a twitter account? How often do you tweet? Does twitter change the way you live? Johnson (2009) mentioned that the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it’s doing to us but what we’re doing to it. Consumer today are no longer consumer anymore, they become prosumer. So what is prosumer? It’s a combination of producer & consumer. It conceptualize users of the day use their media. For instance twitter, you contribute content by tweeting what’s going on with you as a producer and you take information from the twitter as consumer. So there you are, prosumer.
Image URL: http://ansonalex.com/infographics/twitter-usage-statistics-2012-infographic/
The image above shows a study in 2010, it is possible to be addicted to social media as 23% of college students have addiction to it. 21% of them actually have physical and mental distress without exposing to any social media within 24 hours. Undeniable, social media is a very important thing in our life, especially teenagers. Research also shows that Twitter may be harder resist than cigarettes, alcohol, sex, caffeine and sleep. How about you? Are you a heavy user of twitter?
This is a video talks about what people do with twitter.
Chart URL: http://dstevenwhite.com/2011/12/29/social-media-growth-2006-2011/
Globally, the total number of people using twitter increase rapidly and it achieve 300,000,000 users in 2011. Peoples use twitter for different purposes, as we could see from the video above. Below are some of my example on how people use twitter.
1. Social communication – Most of the people use Twitter as their own interest. They tweet anything related to them and when their followers see the tweet, reply it and there goes the social communication. We use twitter as a platform to basically tell people what we are doing, what we are thinking and so on. Besides, there are twitter photo-sharing services, such as TwitPic and YFrog, allow us to post photos to share with our friends through Twitter.
2. Networking – Twitter’s system of shortened links and hashtags make it easy to find people or businesses posting tweets in the same areas that you are. When we posted anything, we can add a hastag “#” to line it to the specific topic or others, this enable people to search easily and you may find people that having the same interest with you as well. Besides you may tag any of your followers with using a “@” in twitter, it’s called as mention. Like when you are having lunch with your friend, you might update your twitter – Having lunch with @abc now. Besides, peoples like to follow things they are interest with. For example, you are a football lover supporting Manchester United and u may follow them in twitter to know the latest updates.
3. Education purpose – Like the subject we are taking now, DIGC202 require us to create an twitter account to tweet about our assignment topic weekly. We are asked to add in the hashtag with #DIGC202 as well. So when we click in the hashtag, we could see what students from Australia main campus tweet about and same goes to they can see what we tweet about. This makes the assessment more interesting as well.
4. Business purpose – Many companies have their own twitter account and they do update frequently.They use their Twitter profiles to increase traffic and find new visitors for their websites. According to Southern (2012), many businesses specifically offer special deals and promotions exclusively through Twitter. Twitter’s “retweet” function allows other Twitter users to re-post your tweet if they find it interesting; being retweeted by several popular Twitter users can significantly increase exposure for you tweet and your business. Below are the examples of companies using twitter for their business (Smarty 2008).
This video is telling people Twitter is faster than earthquake. You can know what’s happening around immediately through twitter.
References
Johnson S 2009, How twitter will change the way we live, accessed 6/10/2012, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1902818-4,00.html
Smarty A 2008, 16 examples of huge brands using twitter for business, accessed 6/10/2012, http://www.searchenginejournal.com/16-examples-of-huge-brands-using-twitter-for-business/7792/
Southern S 2012, The purpose of twitter, accessed 6/10/2012, http://techtips.salon.com/purpose-twitter-1039.html
Steve 2011, Social media growth 2006-2011, accessed 6/10/2012, http://dstevenwhite.com/2011/12/29/social-media-growth-2006-2011/
Kayteee ♥ 
I would agree that Twitter is actually success transform into a new form of advertising place and so-called word of mouth announcement by retweet the advertisement. Beside that, people tend to fit everything into 140 words limitation of Twitter and therefore there are quite a numbers of abbreviations (LOL, LMAO, FYI, AFK) created. Other than that, I agree that Twitter is somehow much more easy to access as its simplicity function compare to Facebook.
Yes, I agree Twitter is actually success transform into a new form of advertising place. Many organizations can find out about how people view the company. Consumers can even play a role in how the organization operates and affect its status in the market thanks to Twitter by “retweeting” responses or comments on the advertisement. Twitter is also much easier to access as its simplicity function compare to Facebook. Twitter even has a special shortened links and “hashtags” system which make it easy to find people or businesses posting tweets in the same areas that you are in. – Commented by Ram Peow Loong Naidu.
It is true that social networking sites like Twitter especially are difficult to resist. I feel people are so ‘addicted’ to it because of its simplicity and convenience. Yes, we have a character limit but normally shorter phrases are more catchy than longer ones, which makes it easy to remember and that is what we want when we post something up, to capture attention of other people. Other than that, because of smartphones it is super convenient to access Twitter.
Yes, i agree that twitter is a social networking site for peoples to know each other. Its just an easy way to meet people, to keep in contact with friends and family. Besides, you can learn things that happen around the world.