Twitter has grown to be one of the most prominent social media platforms since it was launched fourteen years ago, on March 21, 2006. Twitter lets its users both send and receive posts known as tweets. These tweets consisted of only 140 characters per tweet but have since been extended to be up to 280 characters long. You can also post pictures, or moving pictures known as gifs or videos. You can either create your tweets or retweet something written by another person. Twitter’s co-founder created it with the intention of it being an ‘SMS-based communications platform in which friends could keep tabs on each other by updating statuses’ but has grown into something much bigger. While its main purpose stays, it has broadened to be a place where many people get their news in real-time or simply enjoy the content of people whose interests are like yours.
Twitter is one of the best social media platforms for businesses, news sites, marketers or simply the average person. This is based on my criteria that it is easy to use, effective, up to date with all the latest features but also content and has some unique features. Twitter is easy to use because it allows anyone to post and promote their research, opinions, or product(s) and gives you the choice to follow up on the short content of the tweet with links as well as being able to contribute or start a discussion under that same tweet by commenting. On your Twitter timeline, you will always find something similar to your interests but you can also explore that outside of your own. It is effective because with Twitter you can reach new audiences in large numbers due to the retweeting feature. Anyone can become popular through the app by posting interesting or relatable content or simply just have a few popular tweets.
Like many other media platforms, Twitter allows you to share things quickly with others and many of the times those things are up-to-date news and developments. There have been times where news posted on twitter has spread quicker than most traditional news outlets. Twitter is unique through its retweet concept which is public to anyone unless that account is private. It allows you to express yourself, company, or anything in between through short tweets. Short tweets are important because most people don’t want to read long content via a screen. Having them be short makes them very practical and simple.
References
- Forsey, C. (2019, January 29). What Is Twitter and How Does It Work? Retrieved April 8, 2019, from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-twitter
