I am sure you have all heard of the website called twitter. Just this past week, they bought a text messaging company called cloudhopper. Twitter first started out as a text messaging service, the reason the tweets are only 140 characters long is the length of a text message. Cloudhopper will help twitter connect directly to mobile carrier networks around the world. The new york times says that twitter now processes more than one billion tweets a month.
Cloudhopper has already been working with twitter to connect its service directly with mobile characters around the world, this is so the users do not have to pay extra to send or receive message tweets. Now using twitter with text messaging is useful in developing countries because people there do not always have web-enabled phones, and the majority of twitter users are outside of the united states. One example said by the new york times was one way developing countries use twitter is for farmers in rural India so they are able to tweet that a fresh crop is for sale.
Many people think about twitter as a web-tool and use it on their phones or online. Evan Williams a co-founder of twitter says that there is "untapped potential" with twitter text message usage and that mobile is where most of the usage will happen. To this day, I do not really know what the point of twitter is. From watching tv I see that many celebrities have twitter and I do not really find a huge purpose for it. From what I know, It seems like people will tweet every few hours to say what they are doing, who they're with, and what new thing they have. Personally I do not find this interesting, therefore I do not have a twitter. Maybe there is more to it, but like I said I don't really know much about it. I find it interesting that twitter is in developing countries and people use it to sell there goods. This is a good way to advertise but not tell the world about everything you are doing, etc.
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I do not have a Twitter account either. I have heard a lot about it from a lot of people though. I’m sure in the near future everyone will have it and that will be how we have to communicate. I am very surprised that developing countries are able to have Twitter. It sounds like it will be much more user friendly now that they have bought this other company. I don’t know if I will ever have a Twitter account, but I know to some people it is very important. I’m sure the media likes it because it is easier for them to get information about people.
ReplyDeleteThe information about developing countries using Twitter as a way to advertise (and just stay connected) is quite interesting. However, in the U.S. especially, I think that Twitter became basically just another time waster--who really needs to know what Joe had for lunch, anyway? I can't say that I will be getting a Twitter account. Realistically, Facebook is enough social-networking for me.
ReplyDeleteI signed up for twitter quite awhile just so I could see what all the hype was about and I thought it is was so dumb and so confusing. Then one day I decided to go on out of boredom and I am became hooked. I think that fascinating part of it that you can follow people who interest you and keep up to date with what is going on around the world. I think the text messaging is a cool idea because now the world will be in more connected without the extra charges.
ReplyDeleteI made a twitter account maybe around a year ago and i probably only went on it a few times. I find it to be kind of pointless but I guess its good for celebrities and people in developing countries as you said. I find that many celebritites do use it to promote items or places to eat, etc. I agree with stephanie when she says that its cool the world will be more connected without the extra charges, thats one thing that this economy is doing, prices getting higher and higher.
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