Microblogging Madness: Twitter

The microblogging social media platform, Twitter has become a huge success since the year it was created on March 21, 2006. The social media site, which allows people to create “tweets” and connect with other user has been very beneficial for not just socializing but for companies to market their brand. Twitter has also come very far to expand into more than just a site for these two aspects. Today, people look to Twitter to find different current events. The instant speed of the web has allowed people to post and create a fast-acting news source system. 

During the heavy rainfall in Houston, the city of Houston posted things on their twitter to communicate with there community fast and efficiently. They Tweeted “911 services at capacity. If u can shelter in place do so, a few inches in your home is not an imminent danger. Only call if in imminent danger” People who were not in the situation directly also tweeted people in need to provide advice through the devastating tragedy.

Twitter can be useful in many different ways. In a journalistic aspect, you can get news to talk about instantly. There are so many hashtags trending with the latest news story that journalist can get the story even before it actually airs on the news.

Twitter has also become good for politics. Politicians have noticed the growth in the social media presence. They started to take advantage of that and ran to social media platforms like Twitter where they can rant and talk about things. Although twitter in the place to get retweeted multiple times and the post view by many, it up to the politicians and their PR to keep that positive image of their campaigns. According to the twin of politicians tweeted can expand in the world of politics.


This platform can also be great as an organizational tool because the hashtags help to categorize everything. Once you look up a certain hashtag you can find many things on the topic. The more things are narrow down and specific the easier it is to find.

Over the last twelve month, one event that happened over the course of the month was the Event with R. Kelly that took over the whole network. When the controversial documentary that talked about him being a rapist and pedophile came out it sparks conversation. One of the interviews with R Kelly and Gal dropped, the internet retweet was outstanding.  Whether it be them making fun of his crying and acting out on national tv, or people just talking about the situation, the R&B star became a twitter topic on the Twitter community. #MuteRKelly has hashtagged thousands of times.

     Another event that took place was when Ihop changed its name. Last June 2018, they changed their name to Ihob and announced that that would be changing their focus from breakfast foods over to burgers. This cause Ihop lovers in an uproar, not understanding why the go-to breakfast place would change their name and focus. People continued to tweet IHOP and retweeting their post. The marketing plan was a success once Ihop revealed this change was not actually true. It sparked up one-million conversations on the platform.

Another event the was widely tweeted about was was when Kanye West went to the White House. Many people were disgusted by his appearance and him a Trump had. There were many bad tweets going out. Kanye has also tweeted that he support Trump. He later went back and said the mistake he has made for doing this

One company I chose for my Twitter was Coca-cola. This is a drink that I love and the company has been around for many years. I wanted to see how they still continue to market themselves to this day. The next I chose was NASA I did not know much about what the organization does daily or why they would need a twitter. I definitely thought this would be interesting to be able to study. The last thing I chose to follow was Tidel, itis an online streaming network ran by rapper Jayz and singer Beyonce. Their streaming service offers many exclusive app features. 

This experience has been very different from blogging because it is much smaller. With Twitter, you have to make sure you elaborate using the right words. With only two hundred and fifty characters being used in the post you must make sure that you get straight to your point. With blogging, it is way more easy to elaborate on ideas and for the word count to be endless.  Also compared to other social media accounts Twitter is mostly about the words rather than the images. Although you can add images and gifs that is not the main focus of the post. Tweeting was definitely different for me because I have not been on it in many years, I am definitely more of an Instagram user.