Twitter- Your mini diary.

Look back to the title, it's not very hard to understand how eventually Twitter changed our way to express our self. We used to write diary on the book (If you had this habit and you still remember). But with the dot com burst, everything change. Books are needed no more. Everything is in the 2D screen format. You can get whatever you want and most importantly, is the way you express yourself to the world through Internet. From Frienster, Blogger, Facebook and Twitter. They had the common characteristic: Freedom of Speech, private space and also the mobility to access to the website.

Let me introduce Twitter, the latest social networking sites. It works within 140 characters. The term "Tweets" refers to the sentences that you post to the Twitter. Also, Twittter had the features of harsh tag which is "#". This is the interesting part which had maintain the numbers of users in Twitter ad even increasing. This is how harsh tag works, with the harsh tag, you can eventually see every tweets of different users from all around the world regarding to the same topic. Let's take #MondayBlue as example, when you go through the #MondayBlue harsh tag you can see the users had the common topic and it's happening in anytime.

The pictures above are the print screen of the Twitter harsh tag. It showed that every one were updating their tweets with the same harsh tag and it's keep updating with every minutes. In my point of view, harsh tag actually had the advantages of building the common bond within the Twitter users. It's like a starting topic for a conversation between the users. More than that, there is a features named "Follower", which is your friends follow your Tweets which is similar with the features in Facebook called "Friends".

Besides that, Twitter also allowed users shared the link which had showed in the pictures above. It involved the link sharing and also the @user name which is similar with the Facebook "tag". It's very convenient and it's update so frequently.

Twitter basically can be categorized in 4 ways which are:

(a) News & Opinions 

Much of people still rely on the newspaper no matter is in paper or digital form. But now there are also another ways to get the latest news without going through the bunch of words in the newspaper which is using Twitter to summarize the news in 140 characters and also some links-sharing which can give you a more customized and also more segmented news.

(b) Searching

As the search engine had evolved so fast which had become parts of our life. Twitter had eventually helped us in expanding the search engine searching. We no need to worry on how and what we going to search in the search engine but can get the information by the link sharing on the Twitter which is directly go to the sources. It saves time and also you can find more diverse information from other users.

(c) Advertising

This plays important in every people. People may advertise themselves to get more followers and popular, people may advertise themselves such as blog to earn some income, well, advertising is important not only for personal but also for the business. People can expand their business by advertising through Twitter with the latest deal or promotions, or even to create awareness as social networking sites are always timely. People can always update what's the latest news and others followers can get to know it in first-hand. For example, McDonald, when they update with the new menu promotion in the Twitter, the follower can eventually get the promotion in the first hand. What's more is that when the numbers of followers getting increase, the more message will passed through everyone in the Twitter.


(d) End user Innovation

No doubt that the Internet had eventually brought the invention of the social networking sites and also a new platform for people to interact and express themselves. It's basically pro-user based. People creates their content such as story sharing, link sharing, what's happening in your daily life.......just with the 140 characters.

It's hard to believe that we are no needed our small little book to records down what happening and feeling in our self. We now tend to open up to the world about what we are thinking right now, what we just had done, and what we going to do. It's like exposed to the outer about our self. This is a great things but come to think of it, when the more you exposed yourself to the outer world, did you notice that someone that you don't even know who is she/he are stalking or observing you and you are give them the chance to know more about you. That's the privacy problem that we should be aware in the cyber world. You should notice, and so do we.

Web 2.0

This was the person of the year that published in Times Magazine at 2006. You might think on why the cover page is not some celebrities or some business leader but is YOU. This is because 2006 is the starting point of the Web world. It start with the WWW which also known as World Wide Web. Basically it's made up of HTML--Hypertext Markup Language.

Web 1.0 features were less interactive and more information based. People are more on searching and accepting the information rather than sharing the information that they had. However, things change when the Web 2.0 is introduced.

But what is Web 2.0? What are the features that made it distinct with Web 1.0? In contrast, Web 2.0 is more likely to explore on sharing part. It's more interactive. It concentrates on the common applications/services such as blogs, video sharing, social networking and podcasting—a more socially connected Web in which people can contribute as much as they can consume (Paul Anderson, 2007). It provides more spaces for people to edit and share the information. They are called Prosumer which they produces the content but at the same time they were also part of consumers which consumes the information. Web 2.0 had no barriers.

In Web 2.0, there is more flexibility for the users. The contents of the Web are more user-generated content which is the users produce the information themselves. Thus, there were the social networking sites or so called social media such as Facebook, Flickr, Blogger, WordPress, YouTube to share out the knowledge. What can be more described is that social media had represented the user itself, it's like the mini diary. They are connected to the people surrounding them. What's more is that they are connected to the world.

Maybe there are no much difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 as what I can said is that Web 2.0 would be the extension version or can be understand as the evolution of the web throughout this few years. People were always looking for something new. Something that is fresh to them to let them try and experience it.

This is based on the reading of What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education by Paul Anderson