By Ashlie Harper, Intern
I’ve been an active “facebook-er” for years now, but it was only in the last six months that I jumped on the tweeting bandwagon. Before I correctly learned how to use it, I found myself thinking Twitter was a pointless and unimportant tool. “Why does anyone need to know what’s happening in a short 140 character sentence?” I thought.
It wasn’t, then, until a few months ago that I really saw the potential of Twitter. Not only can I find out the latest news instantly — I follow such news sites as The Huffington Post and PBS News Hour — but I am now constantly connected with friends, coworkers, classmates, and even teachers. I’ve also found myself using it as a search engine, just like I use Google or Bing. If I browse my Twitter home page for just a few minutes, I’ll get the latest information in not only news and politics, but also celebrities, fashion, and friends.
The funny thing about all of these websites is, the more you use them, the more useful and more personalized they become for you. A couple of weeks ago, I started following the Twitter account of my college –Western Michigan University. By simply doing that, I could now find out on my phone and computer the latest news and information about what was happening around campus. The value of social networking is becoming more important by the second for schools because it connects thousands of students and faculty together who have a common interest –education.
But a tweet isn’t just about news. In a marketing class I’m taking this semester, my professor tweets a list of “to-do’s” for the next class period. It is a simple yet effective way to get an assignment out to mass amounts of students quickly. That’s why using Twitter is becoming more popular every day.
In the beginning of my Twitter adventure, I only talked about things such as what I was doing for the day and how I was feeling. But I’ve learned that using Twitter is about so much more than that. It’s about connecting with people you never thought possible, finding out urgent news with a few clicks of a mouse, and sharing the information you’ve learned with followers of the same interest. The internet is not just an entertainment tool anymore; it is about linking people together to create a more diverse and news-rich world right at our fingertips.
