Oprah recently discovered it, Ashton Kutcher showed wife Demi Moore’s bottom on it, Jennifer Aniston dumped John Mayer because of it and Barack Obama used it to win the race to the White House. Seems everyone is aTwitter these days.
So, can you tweet? No, it has nothing to do with singing like a canary - it’s the latest social networking craze that is gaining more followers in South Africa every day. With a limit of 140 characters on every “tweet” (message) you send it’s easy to update friends on snippets of your life, comment on the conduct of a celeb or share information on newsy events you’ve witnessed.
For example, a South African celeb such as 5FM DJ Gareth Cliff, his usual cutting self on the online site, writes, “Just saw our indescribably stupid Minister of Foreign Affairs on TV in Geneva and resolve to loathe her in perpetuity.”
But it’s not only a place for celebrities to drop titbits for their fans. Twitter has become one of the most important ways of gathering news.
Twitter’s extraordinary potential in terms of news dissemination became apparent during the terror attacks in India last year. Tourists trapped in besieged Mumbai hotels sent constant updates and their tweets appeared on major news channels such as UK-based Sky News and the BBC.
People who found themselves lost in the devastating bushfires in Australia last year were rescued because they could tweet to tell where they were. And when a plane made an emergency landing in New York’s Hudson River in January passengers were able to send out messages and photographs of the event well before news teams arrived.
After being around for just two years Twitter is catching up with Facebook as the social network site of choice.
Twitter was started by American software engineers Evan Williams (34), Jack Dorset (32) and Biz Stone (34) in 2006 and has grown rapidly. Industry experts say it’s the fastest-growing site and the third-most visited social network after Facebook and MySpace.
But young people aren’t the only ones on the site. The average Twitter user is 25 to 54 years old, according to online survey company ComScore.
So what do you need to do to start twittering? Get your hands on the 7 May issue of YOU for tips on using this service. You can also follow YOU on Twitter at http://twitter.com/YOUMagazine.
