Twitter – what the heck is it?

Everyone has probably heard of Twitter at this point. Yet, many people still don’t know just what it does. I was one of those people, until today. Basically, Twitter is a social networking site, much like myspace or facebook. The difference is that twitter revolves around one question: “what are you doing?”.

This is what a basic twitter page looks like. You first set up your profile and then you type in what you are doing. You can add friends and friends can add you. Friends in twitter are called “followers”. By “following” someone, you are essentially subscribing to their twitter page. You will see that person’s status updates and you will be able to comment on that person’s status. Your own followers will do the same for you. Twitter might seem kind of stupid and less personal than say –facebook. Truth be told, it is. Twitter is basically a social networking service that revolves around “status updates”. Think facebook, but only with “status updates”. You might be thinking “what the heck is the point of Twitter then?”. Well, the way I see it, Twitter is a different kind of social networking from Facebook. Facebook is more personal and revolves around keeping in touch with your real friends. Hence the reason why you don’t accept random friend requests on FB, because you wouln’t want random strangers to access your private info. Twitter on the other hand is much more open-ended and less personal, it revolves around connecting random people from all walks of life over the web. In short, Facebook is for keeping up with your “real life friends” and twitter is more tailored towards making “cyber friends”.

Add me on Twitter

~ by hyeunny on February 8, 2009.