Before I began my degree at the University of Wollongong I knew nothing about the microblogging site. I initially thought that it was just a whole bunch of “OMG, LOL and WTF’s” however now looking into the platform, it is much more then it seems. I have been using Twitter for 2 years now and I find that by aggregating content you can easily find out what you want with efficiency and speed.
Twitter is based on a simple yet seemingly trivial concept that lets people share momentous or mundane moments of their life in 140 characters – Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder.
After further analysis Twitter turns out to have unsuspected depth (Johnson 2009). This depth is thankful to the user. The user is what transformed the platform from a simple conversation between friends to one that defines time and space, tracks real time events and reinvented the way we communicate. It was the ‘hunch’ that Williams took, believing in the users, which really paid off, “when people use your product in an entirely new way, embrace the change” (Williams 2009). End user innovations include the syntax (@nicSALTER) as a way of replying to a specific person and the convention of grouping a topic or event with the ‘hashtag’ (Johnson 2009).
The development of the platform does not jut stop at the user. Twitter has allowed multiple programmers to write systems that use Twitter. An example of this is the website Tweet Deck. It acts as a search engine, aggregating all the content related to a specific topic, allowing users to track real time events like the recent political events in Australia.
However the most impost aspect of Twitter that is paramount of its success is that the platform changed the dynamics of information. Previously legacy media condensed content into easily digestible chunks which we could only consumer. Consumers now control the flow of information, the speed we access information has increased and talk while people are talking – the ability to give and gain feedback instantly. Moreover, we as Individuals may only be one pebble but as a whole we will build a bridge.
For more information on the ‘bridge made of pebbles’ metaphor check out Dr Teodor Mitew’s presentation here.
References
Johnson, s 2009, How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live, TIME, viewed 18/09/2013, accessed via http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1902818,00.html
Willians E 2009, Twitter and the power of the unexpected; Ted Talk, viewed 19/09/2013, accessed via http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2009/03/ted-talk-twitter-the-power-of-the-unexpected-.html
Media Musings 
Twitter has been using by many people, it is very interesting to read a long story from a short twitter’s tweet. For example, on the 15th of April 2013, during the annual Boston Marathon, two bombs exploded near the finish line, killing 3 people and injuring more than 140 people. During that time Twitter has been using countless time by government, media and other people.https://blog.twitter.com/2013/the-boston-bombing-how-journalists-used-twitter-to-tell-the-story
It’s funny to thing that replying to tweets or hashtags were never intended by the creators of twitter. Twitter users have really expanded on the social networking site and have made it something much bigger then it ever intended to be, which is great. Twitter has also changed the way in which we communicate, i found this great article that explains how twitter has done this. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/03/21/twitter.birthday.communication/index.html
As you mentioned tweetdeck has made it a lot easier to follow certain events as all related tweets are gathered together. In all great job on explaining the success of twitter 🙂
I like how you emphasized that what makes twitter so efficient as a source of information is because it is able to aggregate the mass of information. I think the hashtag capability on twitter is one of the most important innovations as it allows users to aggregate the information that is available on twitter. Without the hashtag we may find twitter as a big jumbling mess that we have to sift through to just be able to find the information we want. It was very surprising for me to find out that the hashtag was an end-user innovation and not something that the founders of twitter had embedded within the platform when it was first launched (http://www.quora.com/Hashtags/How-did-the-idea-for-hashtags-originate-on-Twitter).
I agree with jonathyo above, that the hashtag is one of the most important parts of Twitter. The hashtag is integral to Twitters success as it effortlessly connects people from around the globe in a simple, easy to use and understand manner. Accessibility of information is key on the Internet and Twitter allows users to easily search hashtags in order to find the information they are after in seconds. In addition to information gathering, hashtags are a powerful marketing tool, many businesses utilise. See “How to Choose a Hashtag” https://blog.twitter.com/2013/how-to-choose-a-hashtag
I like how you have mentioned that Twitter has changed the dynamics of information. While I realise the photo you included wasn’t a main point you were making, I was still interested to find out how the government and Twitter come together. I was more than surprised with what I came up with and your point on changing dynamics couldn’t be more true. All areas of the government have their own Twitter sites allowing people another avenue to access information (http://australia.gov.au/news-and-media/social-media/twitter).
The potential of the hashtag is so great! And this potential is used so much more in Tweet Deck than on the actual Twitter site, in my opinion. There are a number of hashtags that I follow on Tweet Deck and some that I only follow during a certain time. While watching a recent episode of SBS’s Insight, I was also watching my computer screen as I tracked #InsightSBS and #transgender. These were the two hashtags promoted on the show to gain audience involvement. The great thing about Tweet Deck (which you can’t do on Twitter) is to track more than one hashtag at a time. So you can see many more responses on Tweet Deck than you would on Twitter. The feed on Tweet Deck even automatically updates!
I remember being told about tweet deck at the beginning of our degree. I haven’t really used it much since because I haven’t been in the position where I need to follow a number of hashtags. I must try follow a show some time!!
I have only really just discovered the Tweet Deck and it’s amazing to think about the possibilities of using Twitter as a search engine, as there is so much content that is filtered through it daily. This helped me to investigate the Tweet Deck further and discover more about the social platform. Well written.