The Internet is a great tool for socializing. We all need to socialize and with many of our friends and family living in far distant cities we use the Internet to get crucial information to those we love. With a simple click of a button we can reach thousands of people. Obviously we also can sell products and find important information on websites. But we primarily use the Internet for social communication. Of the various social websites out there, you might have heard of Myspace and Facebook. These sites allow each user to create their own page on which they can receive information from other people. They are great tools for keeping up with people you might otherwise never talk with. However, there are some other social networking sites that you should know about, like Twitter.
Twitter also allows you to create your own profile, but you can only exchange short messages of one hundred and forty words each. Thus Twitter is a good way to share small amounts of information. However, Twitter also has some functions that are a bit different than the other social networking sites. Twitter allows messages, known as ‘tweets,’ to be sent through various means. You can text a tweet through your phone and have it appear on the Twitter site or have it sent to all of your friends in the form of text messages. Twitter also allows this form of communication through instant messenger and email. This means that it is a very good way to share important information with large groups of people quickly. You can imagine how helpful this could be in several different personal, social, and business matters.
While Twitter has provided some great communication for many people, are there any problems with the system? Most complicated technological systems are convenient but they can breakdown or encounter serious problems. Here are some of the problems people have had with Twitter:
•Twitter is great partly because it allows you to get information to many people. However, communicating with lots of people in an electronic format uses lots of memory. As a result, Twitter has experienced significant outages at particular times when the sheer amount of demand is high. This could be very frustrating when you really need to send someone a message. Imagine your cell phone breaking at the time of an emergency or when you need to make an important business move.
•While SMS service used to be free for Twitter users, it is now primarily not free. At times instant messaging messages have not be available for months at a time.
What these problems might suggest is that you should not rely on Twitter for crucial communications. Don’t plan on Twitter as your only communication’s resource. Plan on having emergencies and think accordingly. However, this does not mean that Twitter is worthless or that it has terrible problems. The site provides a good basis for lots of communication. It is just important to keep in mind that with more people joining it will be difficult to keep the same service going. Twitter will probably change with the level of demand, but this does not mean that there might not be further outages in the near future. As with any electronic communication’s device, you should always consider a backup for special occasions. If you are attending an event that could promote a great deal of Twitter buzz, such as a technology expo, realize that others might also use Twitter to talk about the event, thereby creating so much use as to stop service.
