One hundred forty characters

published 20 April 2009, MST

Tweets, anyone?

Twitter (www.twitter.com) is the recent star of cyber space. It is a social networking, micro-blogging -- a mix of instant messaging and blogging -- site which allows its users to post 140-character updates on anything and everything imaginable. It is much like the “What are you doing?” feature in your Facebook account, on which your “friends” can comment and on which you can comment as well Twitter users can have followers and can follow others, commenting one each other's updates, called Tweets, either on the main home page for everybody to see (similar to one's wall on Facebook) or on the page for direct messages (like the inbox). The gratification comes from the fact that the exchange is instant.

I myself am just beginning to get the hang of Twitter. I created an account primarily because I've been reading about its meteoric rise and I wanted to write about it. And how can I write about it if I don't know it firsthand,right? After three weeks, I now have a grand total of...six followers. I am following four people. Pathetic, I know, and Ashton Kutcher (yes, the husband of Demi Moore) just passed the one million mark, beating CNN. But Kutcher is a movie star. I like my network to be composed of people I really know.

Still, even if you have only a few followers, that doesn't mean your updates are not available to the rest of the twittering world. There's a tab called “Everyone,” a running list that shows tweets from the universe -- all the other people in the world logged on using their computers or cell phones at that given time.

Wikipedia says: “A February 2009 Compete.com blog entry ranks Twitter as the third most used social network (Facebook being the largest, followed by MySpace),which puts the number of unique monthly visitors at roughly 6 million and the number of monthly visits at 55 million. In March 2009, a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009. Twitter had a growth of 1382%, Zimbio had a growth of 240%, followed by Facebook with a growth of 228 %.”

A New York Times article asks what makes a site that announces what somebody ate for breakfast tick that it now boasts of 14 million users (the number may have shot up, and exponentially, since the article was published a week ago) who visited the site 99 million times in March. Then the author, Claire Cain Miller, concedes that Twitter “is a useful tool for solving problems and providing insights into the digital mood.”

Indeed the Web site's popularity is due to many things. I mentioned Kutcher, 31, who initially only wanted to connect with his and Demi's fans. Later Kutcher became more serious in his campaign and committed to donate $100,000 to the Malaria No More Fund if he wins the race to sign up his one millionth follower. (This incentive, of course, made followers feel better about being a party to one man’s fancy, especially if they were not fans to begin with). Kutcher claimed he wanted to show that in Twitter, one person's voice was as powerful as an entire giant network's.

This weekend, Kutcher won, and he appeared on Larry King Live. He and King (who had vowed to “bury” Kutcher in the Twitter war), as well as the other guests, tried to spell out the Twitter phenomenon to the public. But Twitter CEO Evan Williams’ appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s show probably did a better job at that.

Apparently, not even Jon Stewart's disdain for Twitter – it's inane chatter, he said – broke the Web site. Last month on The Daily Show, Stewart poked fun at US lawmakers who used Twitter to articulate their thoughts on President Obama's speech before the joint Congress. He said they were too busy twittering and not really listening. That might not exactly be true especially with those who commented more than about Michelle Obama's outfit or her toned arms. On the contrary, it showed just how powerful a tool Twitter could be in assessing political sentiment, whether of a small group like the lawmakers, advocacy groups, a state, or the nation in general.

For example, groups who staged a rally during the G20 summit were shown using Twitter to get themselves organized even as they were working in different locations. Twitter accounts and depictions also proved invaluable in cases of emergency such as the protests in Greece, the terror attacks in Mumbai and even the landing of that passenger plane in New York's Hudson River. People on the site used their Twitter accounts to tell the story from where they were – it's raw, firsthand information – long before the more established media outfits could rush to the scene with their cameras and reporters. It's citizen journalism at its most crisp – you can't be too wordy; remember that you are only given 140 characters.
Twitter has been used in surgery as doctors present were guided by another doctor not in the operating room. There was also the American graduate student who got arrested in Egypt for taking pictures of an anti-government rally. He twittered his SOS to his home and his college, and help came –fast.
Moreover, businesses have recognized the possibilities posed by Twitter in terms of generating sales. According to Bloomberg, Dell has landed $1 million of sales using the Web site. “Even though that’s a fraction of Dell’s $61 billion in annual sales, it costs almost nothing.” It's a good development, especially at a time when the costs of traditional advertising have become prohibitive and people are more reluctant to part with their money. Businesses become aware, instantly, of people's sentiments. It’s easier for them to know what these clients want, need or think.
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But enough of the bigger world. Each person has a different way of posting updates – some wax philosophical (“Why fight nature?”), some are dead-honest with their feelings (“My ex is crazy!”) while some really just say what they are doing or beholding at that moment (“Just had yummy laing for lunch.”). Your followers are a willing audience; somebody has likened the experience to watching a flickering fire. It's the very little details of somebody else's life, things we really don't need to know.

So why are we still reading the tweets?

Because it's reciprocal; we get this much attention as well. Dr. Moses Ma, in a March 27 article in Psychology Today Blogs, explores the existential psychology of and underlying meaning - and meaninglessness - of Twitter. He says the Twitter system fills the need for real community, for which the present world is starved.

Ma adds that Twitter is “an exercise in unconditional narcissism - the idea that others might actually care about the minutiae of our daily lives. I believe that this phenomena of micro-celebrity is driven by existential anxiety. I twitter, therefore I am. I matter. I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggoneit, people like me.” Of course, the people who actually twitter don't consciously think about these things. They have their own reasons for doing so and should not explain their habits to anybody – so long as nobody's getting hurt or put at risk.

The problem is that in as much as Twitter (actually, the Internet in general) opens up a lot of doors, these doors can be good and bad at the same time. Aside from feeding ones narcissistic indulgences, consider how easy it is now to stalk somebody who innocently posts her activities on her page. The instant interaction may also trick the mind into thinking there is intimacy when in fact there is none, because that other fellow is halfway around the globe, or that you don't really know each other, anyway, since a person cannot be wholly defined by his or her tweets. Twitter may also be used for deliberate disinformation and malicious attacks against a person or an establishment. At its worst, it may even be used to plan and carry out terror attacks.

Twitter is a fad, in the manner of all the other things that came and stayed and eventually went. The attention it now gets may be explained in many ways – and there have been many attempts -- but the energy to get to the bottom of why people actually twitter can now be channeled to preventing its misuse, even abuse, without necessarily cramping the users’ individual expression and the human need for connection.

adellechua@gmail.com