Thursday, October 24, 2013

Critical Analysis of a Current Trend in Technological Communication {Twitter}

Twitter is described as a place where you can, “Instantly connect to what's most important to you. Follow your friends, experts, favorite celebrities, and breaking news”. T.W.E.E.T. stands for target, write, engage, explore, and track. People believe that social media is a terrible thing, and in some cases it could be seen that way, but if it is used correctly, then it is a great tool. This app lets people voice their opinion on any topic that they can think of. The total number of active registered Twitter users is estimated to be 554,750,000 people. It’s crazy to think that I am just one of the users included in that very large statistic. Some of the reasons why Twitter is used are to simply participate in the new phenomenon of tweeting, to communicate with your followers or group, to communicate with the World-at-large, to archive your online and/or offline activities, and for branding a product or service, because it’s required by a school assignment.
Twitter allows you to promote your business in a positive light. The social app connects you to your a larger audience of customers world-wide. Engaging with your customers will allow your business to grow and become more popular, especially when using hashtags. Due to the large amount of followers one may have on twitter, it becomes easier to “spread the word”. Twitter was once used to help the unemployed. This project brought attention to many people and made a true difference. On the other hand, Twitter can be used negatively when socializing with other people. It can cause drama and can practically set a rude tone that may not even be existent.
Even in the white house Twitter is a huge problem to look out for. A White House national security staffer was reportedly fired for Twitter postings under alias and that is a serious issue that we should pay regards to. Jofi Joseph was his name and the account, titled @natsecwonk, was deleted last week. The posts never mentioned any detailed and high classed information; however, it did contain details that should not have been put out to the public in any which way or form. The tweets discussed unappealing views on Obama’s administration policies and administration officials.
Twitter can also help shine some light on a new TV show, movie, or talk show, for example. It can gain popularity and become very successful due to the large audience. From another point of view, people can make rude comments on that TV show, movie, or talk show and that program can become unsuccessful as well depending on the “consumer” of the “product”.This app can project news across the world rapidly, which can be important for foreign countries; however maybe the United States wants to keep that information to themselves in case that information should not have been given out to the public just yet. From a recreational point of view, a simple random tweet may be funny to some of the public and may be “retweeted” or “favorited”. Others may find that random tweet to be offensive to let’s say their religion, sexual preference, or anything else of the sort.
Twitter can be abused by users called trolls. These “trolls” are people who use their accounts to send out abusive messages directly to another individual. In order to prevent these people from getting away with this you can easily use the block button, report abusive tweets or spam, report abusive tweets to the police, force accounts reported as abusive into "protected tweet" mode, flag repeat offenders with a yellow flag, which appears on their account details, and many other solutions are available online.

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