By: Emerald Du

For those of you who still “don’t get Twitter,” allow me to throw in my two-cents’ worth of help and advocacy: take what you know about social networking (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, and so on…) and what you know about digital communication (e.g. instant messaging, texting and so forth…), crumple it up into a tight little ball of categorized definitions, then chuck it over the barrier of your mind and off the balcony of your understanding.

Wikipedia currently defines Twitter as a “free social networking and micro-blogging service,” but in reality, the concept of Twitter is nebulous at best. It is a foundation on which you can build upon; it is a stream of raw data with which you can filter for your own devices; it is a means to an end, not an end, etc.

For those of you who still subscribe to industrial media’s rendition of Twitter (i.e. for those of you who still believe Twitter is simply a medium through which the famous and the wannabe-famous broadcast their every activity), let me first thank you for expressing disinterest in the pedestrian minutia of my everyday life. (No seriously, thank you for not creeping me out with overdeveloped voyeuristic tendencies.) Let me then return the favor by quickly — and messily — rehashing for you some of the more beneficial uses creative minds have come up with for this service.

“What is Twitter for?” you ask. Well, my dear reader, Twitter can be used for:

• Businesses to market their products/services via promotions and giveaways; it also provides a hassle-free channel through which customers can offer feedback (simply one @ reply away), and through which companies can offer faster, more concise customer support (answers can only be made in 140 character chunks — word your responses wisely);
• Politicians to tap their public for ideas and opinions regarding government and current leadership (example: @schwarzenegger recently sent out a call for suggestions on how to better run California. Replies tagged with #myidea4ca are pulled into an aggregated and ongoing feed);
• Celebrities to connect with their fans (without having to go through big staged events that are usually long on lines and short on time) to get feedback on their latest works (without having to go through the sometimes diluted and oftentimes pretentious reviews of critics) and to serve as their own sources on personal rumors and facts (without the funhouse-mirror effect of tabloids and paparazzi); and
• Indie artists to promote their work, connect with fans, and generally try to make a living out of doing what they love without having to deal with major publishing companies that tend to cramp styles and stifle creativity (example: @amandapalmer self-reportedly made $19,000 in ten hours by the power of her personality, talent and Tweets alone).

Other uses I have seen for Twitter range from the serious and dire (Missing Person Alerts) to the underground and delish (follow @cremebruleecart and @sexysouplady for secret shop times and locations, those of you in the 415).

Twitter’s “Trending Topics” is another feature which bears noting (so much so that I have given it its own paragraph). Running down the right-hand module of the Twitter dashboard is a list of the ten hottest keywords currently being used in Tweets. These keywords reflect the subjects most talked about at any given moment, and it is a list that is constantly being updated. Word travels fast in the Twitterverse, so if you’re wondering how so many people knew about Michael Jackson’s demise or the latest developments in the Iranian Election debacle so quickly, this is would be one of the major reasons. Word of mouth stories, instantly published by Twitter, equates to immediate news. Keep in mind these are the stories people actually care about — news filtered by the global public, not always US-centric.

Of course, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that, yes, some businesses merely use Twitter as a one-way channel to advertise their wares. And some politicians just use Twitter as a boring reminder of upcoming press events. Sometimes the feedback you receive through this service are written by hacks, trolls and flamers suffering from Asperger’s. Some celebrities use Twitter just to feed their own egos. And I cannot (as yet) cite an instance where a missing person was found, safe and sound, through the magic of Twitter alone (but the amount of Tweets and Retweets certainly spurred many a local police department to be more immediate with their investigations). Again, yes, there are those who still use Twitter to document every boring thought, every mundane decision of their lives. And the Twitter zeitgeist represented by Trending Topics is not of the world at large but simply that part of the world comprised of English-speaking people in developed countries and English-speaking people with Twitter access in undeveloped countries.

Regardless, every convenience that has come about, and every convenience that will come about, has its faults, so I really have no qualms in stating that Twitter is a powerful and useful service, and far from being a pointless fad. It is here to stay, with its charm and resilience based partly on its malleability. It all depends on what you Tweet and how you Tweet, which people you choose to follow and the people you allow to follow back, how you keep track of and respond to replies, etc. Twitter’s benefits to you are bounded only by the limits of your imagination; its usefulness factor only reflects your own level of creativity.

Do please think on that before commenting on the merits of Twitter in the future.