Twitter- short and sweet

Tweets- more than random thoughts

In recent years social media and marketing efforts have changed drastic
ally. Social media now allows its users to communicate to a vast audience and allows marketers to reach niche markets.
Social media platforms such as Twitter not only allow marketers to reach an audience, it also allows them to see how the audience reacts to the messages. After sending a tweet, they can see how many favorites and retweets it gets and in turn see how effective the message is. On top of this, they can use a Twitter analytic application to view a more in depth analysis of how viewers interacted with the page and the tweets they sent out.

www.theodysseyonline.com

Analytics display how many times people viewed the tweet, how many times people expanded for more information, how many times someone clicked on a picture, and how many times someone clicked on the twitter handle to go directly to the page of the tweet sender.
Social media is evolving more than ever. Using twitter analytics marketers can now spend money to promote their tweets. When they do this it not only promotes their tweets, it does so to the niche market they are trying to reach. For example if a makeup company marketer was trying to promote their makeup and paid to promote their tweet, Twitter will direct the tweet to be displayed as a sponsored tweet on the twitter pages of Females between the ages of 16- 40.
Twitter is effective at conveying messages because all of the messages are limited to 140 characters. This day and age the attention span of a typical message viewer is very limited. The shorter the message the more likely it is to be read. Due to the tweets being limited to 140 characters it forces marketers and people who tweet to be more creative and to the point when tweeting. If the message isn't original and to the point it wont stand out from the hundreds of other tweets that were sent out at the same time.

Following people (in a non-creepy way)

Twitter allows users to have control over the messages they are receiving. A Twitter user can follow pages and people that interest them to ensure that content from these pages shows up on their news-feed.
When deciding who to follow it is important to keep a balance. Following people and pages that convey similar messages can lead to a skewed view of the world and events. Following someone does not necessarily mean the user agrees with what they are saying but rather gives them a different perspective.
An example of a balanced twitter account would be:

http://tcais.org/

1. Following accounts that has an opposing point of view
A person who identifies with the Democratic party would not normally want to listen to the messages of people in the Republican party but that is why it is important to follow them on Twitter. By following someone such as Donald Trump, it gives an opposing perspective and a more in depth understanding of the way the person thinks.

2.Following accounts that provide entertainment 
While it is important to stay up to date on the events unfolding in the world it is also important to enjoy scrolling through Twitter. When users follow accounts that provide things such as comic relief or motivation it makes the user want to return to the application and in turn be exposed to more messages. By following account such as cat celebrity Lil Bub, it provides cute pictures and anecdotes that make users smile.

3. Following accounts that are relevant to personal causes 
celebrity accounts, marketers, and friends are not the only ones utilizing Twitter- Organizations also use Twitter to reach the public and gain support or tell about important events. When users follow organizations such as the Alzheimer's Organization because a loved one had Alzheimer's disease they can keep up to date on events that support that cause and discover ways to support the organization. They can also connect to people with similar experiences.

Now everyone is a journalist 

Twitter gives its users the ability to instantly share what is going on around them. This is both a positive and a negative. There is now the problem of oversharing where twitter users will share everything around them(weather it is of interest or not). For example, twitter users can "live-tweet" a show they are watching or a sporting event they are at, or even what they are doing through out the day such as brushing their teeth and eating lunch.
While the ability to instantly tweet may be a nuisance to some, it also has its benefits. The instantaneous power to convey messages can turn Twitter users into news reporters. People who are experiencing events can update their followers on what is going on and if something unexpected happens they now have the ability to update Twitter users on the events unfolding.

An example of Twitter users becoming journalists  would be when terror attacks occur. Due to the nature of attacks it is hard for people outside the experience to get information. When the event first occurs people rely on people inside the event to obtain information. Although useful as a source of what is going on, sources don't always know what they are talking about or are not completely informed. This causes a problem with social media and misinformation.  A quote from a recent online article from the Guardian encompasses the idea of misinformation by stating
"Twitter does its best work in the first five minutes after a disaster, and its worst in the twelve hours after that." Meaning that the moments right after the event happened are important because what is being tweeted is mostly sensory information such as what the person hears, sees, smells, or tastes then after the event is on the internet people that were not at the event start tweeting and making assumptions with no actual knowledge of the event.
The amateur  news reporting ability has many positives but it also has detriments. The biggest downfall of this aspect of twitter is now, more than ever, people are reporting events and tragedies wrong.
One of the best examples of the link between misinformation and social media in recent times would be the social media coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. The media relied on secondary news sources such as tweets for information and because of this it caused them to misinform the public in many ways according to The Guardian:

Boston.com

• The main brunt of the casualties were identified as families from the Newtown massacre. In one case in particular it was reported that there was a young girl participating in the marathon who was killed while running in honor of her friends that died in the Sandy Hook massacre. In both cases these were later proved to be false.( kids are not even allowed to participate in marathons)
• The suspects were speculated on and misidentified. When the bombing first occurred an image of two people wearing backpacks was circulated and people claimed and identified the two were the ones responsible for the attacks. One suspect was thought to be a missing Brown University student, Sunil Tripathi. It wasn't until Tripathi’s body was found in a Providence park on April 23, 2013 that he was no longer accused of the crime.
• There were also reports that after the attacks the people running the Marathon continued running to the hospital to donate blood.(This was later proved to be false).

There were many more false reports and tweets sent out the day of and days following the bombing. In an online article entitled "How the Boston Marathon explosions reveal the two other sides of Twitter" the author Simon Ricketts discusses how social media is causing a downfall in media specifically when it comes to news. He says the underlying cause of people oversharing or reporting falsely is that people have a desire to feel involved and connected to the situations they are in.   

"There is human need to feel involved, concerned, part of the conversation. We all saw those poor people, struggling across a finish line, only to be blown backwards by the force of a truly shocking explosion. We all want to say "I'm the kind of person who is appalled by this," but in doing so, it can so sometimes come across as trite," Ricketts said.

Ricketts makes the point that Twitter is a good source for basic information about an event, but for more reliable, fact-checked information it is best to stick with actual news sources that funnel fact from fiction. 

Some events that Twitter covered include:

• The Golden Globe awards, which were live tweeted by those in attendance and those watching at home. One event in particular sparked a trend on Twitter- Leonardo DiCaprio winning a Golden- Globe. The following weeks news feeds were flooded with pictures of Leonardo with the award. He became a meme. The coverage of the event was a success highlighting both the good and the bad aspects of the award ceremony (including Amy Poehler wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

• The presidential campaigns which included where the candidates were giving speeches, what was happening at the events, and what the candidates were doing and saying. Coverage of these events has been successful in terms of information but the balance of the tweets is off. Due to the fact that not many opposing views would attend events of candidates they did not support, so they could not input what was happening at the events and give a different perspective. 
• The NHL Draft was covered by Twitter, this included which team was most likely to get the first round draft pick and which players were top of the draft. After these were unveiled many memes were created about where players ended up and how it was going to affect the future of the teams and the league.  Twitter coverage of this event was successful- updating fans on what was happening as it happened and fans provided instant feedback. 

Learning how to utilize Twitter 

In terms of scholastics, projects that use Twitter as a platform help better a students understanding on the media and in turn teach the student how to be a more effective social media user and message receiver.
For example a project that requires students to make a professional twitter, and interact with not only classmates but also other pages on twitter, helps the student realize the importance of social media and specifically how to get a point across in 140 characters or less. It challenges the students and pushes them outside of their comfort zone but in the end it helps them develop a page that shows professionals and potential employers that they know how to utilize the platform.
Twitter is relevant in society today and is quickly becoming a more popular news source than actual newspapers.
By learning how to use Twitter and interpret tweets people learn a set of skills that will prove useful in the social media dependent future.