"Tweet" Term Exploration- Ali Cottrell

I decided to research the development of twitter and the word “tweet”, and how it came to be what it is today. Twitter was created in 2006, and was a completely new phenomenon compared to most social media networks like Facebook and MySpace. The New York Times called it, “a highly flexible messaging system that swiftly routes messages” (Lason).  According to this 2006 article, in society’s eyes followers were “strangers”, there was a few tweets sent every second, and Mr. Edward’s “twittered” back to someone (Lason). Reading this article, I couldn’t help but laugh at how much has changed in 8 years. Twitter is still considered a social network, but followers are now network connections, there are over 9,000 tweets sent per second, and now Mr. Edwards “tweeted” back. The platform has changed drastically, now including social networking and promotions, allowing businesses to advertise too.

            I also viewed in article from Advertising Age written on Twitter in 2006. In Simon Dumenco’s article, he also defined twitter simply as “a service that enables users to send short tweets via their cellphones and other means of input so their friends and acquaintances can keep up of what they’re doing (Dimenco). Twitter was so simple back then, used for individuals to share thoughts and their daily activities. I can’t even try to explain the complexity of what this social media-networking site has changed into now. To give a better idea, though, we can look at the differences in Twitter’s purpose. In 2006, the statement on their homepage was “A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?” Today, it is: “Connect with your friends—and other fascinating people. Get in-the-moment updates on the things that interest you. And watch events unfold, in real time, from every angle.”

            Overall, I think these comparisons simply show how social media networking sites become exponentially more complicated with their purposes and what they allow people to do.

References:

Pontin, Lason. "From Many Tweets, One Loud Voice on the Internet." New York Times (1923-Current file): 1. Apr 22 2007.ProQuest. Web. 19 Sep. 2014 .

Dumenco, Simon. "Web 2.0? Not so Fast-Say Hello to Web 1.9 (if that)." Advertising Age 78.16 (2007): 32. ProQuest. Web. 19 Sep. 2014.