Top Social Networking Site, Twitter - Essay Example

? Social Networking Site: Twitter Introduction Since the start of Internet during the 1990s, various scholars have focused on ifying the unifying traits of virtual or online communities. A virtual community comprises of a group of individuals or business associates who interacted based on common interests, where interactions are technology backed or and/or mediated and directed by certain specific regulations (Preece, 2000). Efforts by the academicians in distinguishing recommendation networks or political factionalism have given reviews into behavioural attitudes of virtual communities that are linked via the electronic networking system (Liben-Nowell and Kleinberg, 2008). Such insights are of practical and academic interests, as they are based on the hypothesis that behaviours and relationships developed within virtual communities more or less show the same characteristics as in real world, as for example, people with similar political interests, or with same commercial inclinations, or having similar predisposition for violence tend to club together within online communities. Currently marketing via social networking media is gaining increasing popularity, owing to the fact that a large number of virtual community members belong to the high earning and spending category. This is evident in Porter’s paper where it was suggested, “firms can also benefit from using virtual communities to fulfill business goals. Many have begun to integrate virtual communities into their online strategies in search of the following benefits: Increased sales Positive word-of-mouth More effective market segmentation Increased website traffic Stronger brands Higher advertising and transaction fee revenue Better product support and service delivery” (Porter, 2004). However, social networking sites provide a difficult challenge for researchers trying to understand the group and human dynamics within it (typology of virtual communities- the 4 Ps as suggested by Constance Porter: Purpose, Place, Platform and Population interaction structure) where the core issue stems from large amount of data available within such sites (Porter, 2004). As for example, Facebook has more than one billion active users, with each user at an average having 120 friendship links and sharing more than a billion references to various posts and articles every month (Fowler, 2012). Twitter, another site for microblogging services, first created in 2006, by Jack Dorsey, has rapidly gained popularity all over the world, and currently in 2012, has more than 500 million active users, producing, at an average count, more than 340 million tweets each day and handling more than 1.6 billion search queries each day (Arrington, 2006). Since the time of its launch, Twitter has is considered one amongst the top 10 most visited social networking sites and is often referred to as “the SMS of the Internet” (D'Monte, 2009).  While tweets are also visible to unregistered users, the registered users can tweet through SMS, website interface, SMS, and through various applications found in mobile devices. Twitter Inc. operates from San Francisco, while its other offices and additional servers are located in Boston, San Antonio and New York City. Twitter users are allowed to tweet on almost any topic where the only limit is the 140-character, while they are also free to follow any other twitter and can receive their tweets. Twitter, a micro-blogging site, has come into the limelight owing to recent incidences, such as the place crash (US Airways) on Hudson River or the incarceration of a US student in Egypt. Unlike other social networking sites, as for example, Facebook, the relationships in Twitter do not require much in-depth interactions, and the ‘follower’ and the ‘followed’ need not reciprocate. A user can ‘follow’ almost anyone, and it is not necessary for the ‘followed’ person to ‘follow’ back. A ‘follower’ on Twitter receives all posts (known as tweets) from the person he/she is following, and the follower in turn can retweet (RT). The precisely delineated mark-up vocabulary along with the 140 characters limit for each posting makes it easy for the users to practice conciseness in while expressing their thoughts and opinions. The mechanism of ‘retweet’ allows users to spread the original tweet amongst other twitters who are not the followers of the person who had ‘tweeted’ the original post. This paper aims to study the topological characteristics of Twitter and discuss the social networking site in the context of digitality, hypertextuality, interactivity, virtuality, hypermediacy, immediacy and automation. It will also discuss how this new media attenuates fragmentation. Analysis Digitality: the term digitality refers to a condition that denotes living within a digital culture, and the word was derived from book Being Digital by Negroponte's in correlation with modernism and post-modernism (Negroponte, 1995). Digitality refers to the constant connection that people living in a postmodern world have using internet, mobile phones, using Google as search engine and communicating via email and weblogs. The negative aspects of digitality comprise of loss of privacy, frequent spam mails and messages and computer viruses. In the 1990s, various researches on digitality primarily emphasised on the juxtaposition and pervasiveness of digital communications, the nature and participation and interactions through the digital media, and the part played by the shallow level of information exchanges that take place through various communicating modes. Twitter being a part of the internet, where users login to remain in constant touch with other users, is evidently a digital media service that provides its users with information and allows them to interact (voice their feelings, thoughts, experiences) constantly (signifying the main characteristics of pervasiveness and immediacy) with any person from any part of the world (fig 1). Fig 1: Twitter experience where one can constantly communicate with other users (from the ppt provided) Another aspect of digitality was brought into focus by Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant, and Kelly, where they stated in the context of digitality, “in a digital media process all input data are converted into numbers” (2009, p.14). When we look at Twitter we find that the tweets are first converted into binary data which are then decompressed in order to make them visible to the users. Tweets are chronologically arranged in linear format maintained as a timeline, and the tweets can also be viewed like a conversation thread, between the users. These characteristics make it evident that Twitter is a digital service. Interactivity: Interactivity relates to a condition when a message is related to a many previous messages and there is a relationship between all the messages (social or professional level messages, as shown in fig 2). One of the most fundamental forms of interactive communication is human communication that takes into consideration two separate processes; human-to-computer interactivity (the process through which people communicate via the new media, as for example twitter or Facebook) and human-to-human interactivity. In this context researchers have claimed, “Human Computer interaction model might consists of 4 main components which consist of human, computer, task environment and machine environment. The two basic flows of information and control are assumed. The communication between people and computers; one must understand something about both and about the tasks which people perform with computers. A general model of human - computer interface emphasizes the flow of information and control at the human computer interface” (Rada and Michailidis, 1995, pp. 12). Twitter’s content is “user-generated” (fig 2) and involves human-to-human interactivity, using the human-to-computer interactivity (any internet based social networking site, such as Twitter) as a medium to connect. In this manner the user turns the producer and becomes free to comment/post/tweet whatever they desire. Videos and images can be posted/shared in order to create further content thus increasing the level of interactivity between the human users via the computer. Fig 2: “A typology of virtual communities” (Porter, 2004). Twitter is a member initiated virtual community, where the relationship orientation (interactions between users) is mainly at social and professional levels. Hypertexuality: Hypertext is the text seen on various electronic devices and computers that have hyperlinks or references to other texts, which allow users to access instantly various sites, simply through a screen touch, keypress or a mouse click and is the underlying theory that helps to delineate World Wide Web. Besides containing running texts, it may also contain images, tables, and other mechanisms, and forms to be a flexible and easy way for information sharing via the Internet. Theodor Nelson first coined the term ‘hypertext’ in 1963, and later in 1990s commented, “By now the word "hypertext" has become generally accepted for branching and responding text, but the corresponding word "hypermedia", meaning complexes of branching and responding graphics, movies and sound – as well as text – is much less used. Instead they use the strange term "interactive multimedia": this is four syllables longer, and does not express the idea of extending hypertext” (1992, Preface). Hypertext is made up from separate units where each unit carries many other routes to other units (Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant, and Kelly, 2009, p.23). The tweets are stored in the database which can be accessed using the hyperlinks in a non-linear fashion. All profiles and tweets are accessible by clicking on a hash-tag using specific phrases or words (keywords) to locate a particular tweet or through the search query at the upper right had corner of a Twitter page. Hyperlinks that are posted in twitter are shortened automatically by using “t.co,” which is a service developed by Twitter. Virtuality: The term virtuality refers to a form of ‘modelling’ using a computer, where the latter is used to create or model of a ‘real’ or a physical equivalent. Therefore, a virtual world imitates the real world, using various 3D structures and tries to copy reality, thus, creating a condition that is known as virtual reality. Thus, virtuality is the capability of the computer operating systems to copy or imitate the equivalent of the real or physical world. In this context, while twitter does not actually create an apparent representation of the real world, it however simulates the physical world using digital data, creating a virtual world referred to as the twittersphere (Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant, and Kelly, 2009). Immediacy is removal of the gap that exists between the signified and a signifier, in a manner where representation is viewed as the real thing. It is the result of a form of verbal realism where the symbol appears as a means to view the real (Burke, 1984). Immediacy is best defined as a “style of visual representation whose goal is to make the viewer forget the presence of the medium (canvas, photographic film, cinema, and so on) and believe that he is in the presence of the objects of representation” (Bolter and Grusin, 2000, pp. 272-73). They further added, “In formal terms, the desire for immediacy is the desire to get beyond the medium to the objects of representation themselves. Different media may enact this desire in different ways. Although linear-perspective painting and film may keep the viewer distant from what he views, in virtual reality the viewer steps through Alberti's window and is placed among the objects of representation” (Bolter and Grusin, 2000, p. 83). While the best examples of immediacy are virtual games, often twitter users also get so deeply involved in the virtual world that their virtual and physical lives merge, and it becomes difficult for users to differentiate between the virtual and physical worlds.   Hypermediacy:  this concept shows a “style of visual representation whose goal is to remind the viewer of the medium” (Bolter and Grusin, 2000, p. 272). Hypermediacy makes the user hyper-conscious of his or hers activities, and it is an expression of one’s fascination with the virtual world itself, however here the user is aware of the barrier that exists between real and virtual worlds. As for example, a student while taking down notes in his or her classroom also updates his or hers Twitter status using a smartphone reflects hypermediacy.  Here the user is aware of the differences in the two the worlds (virtual and real) which allows the user to maintain a distinctly separate identity using the two separate experiences concurrently. Automation: the term automation relates to the optimal use of control systems, machines, and information technologies in order to achieve highest possible level, as regards providing products and services to consumers. Despite being a social networking site where use of automated elements are discouraged by the users, in twitter some automation tools are used in order match with the user’s normal activities and to give it positive boost. Some of the automation tools used in twitter are: Twitter-feed: this is a service that allows the users to link RSS feeds from their favourite blogs, and when these blogs post something new, these post are automatically updated to the user’s twitter account. Social oomph: this is for creating direct automated messages for new followers and is helpful when an account has a large number of followers. Tweet old post: this automation is mainly for WordPress users, and allows one to connect a blog with the Twitter account, where the tweet posts from archives are made accessible for all the followers. Hoostsuite schedule: HootSuite is an automation that offers update scheduling for certain social media accounts, especially at times when the user is away from his or her computer. Discussion Twitter can lessen fragmentation by working synchronously with other social media networks. Twitter and Facebook accounts can be inter-connected along with other websites, which would ensure Twitter users do not lose connectivity with other social network users. Twitter accounts can be used for updating life events of its users, while tweets sent via mobile devices can be used to post live events as they occur. Most of these practices, which are already in use, would help to attenuate fragmentation and increase personalization. Besides these, tweets can be grouped through various external applications and RSS feeds, used for receiving and answering feedback responses and for making business announcements at a pre-determined time. Twitter also suggests new followers, based on common interests and followers, and private accounts can also be created so that their tweets can only be read but not re-tweeted. Promoted tweets, which are actually paid form of advertisements, are shown irrespective of whether a user is a follower of that account. New age social media that use Web 2.0 technologies have created a digital divide to some extent, as for example twitter, YouTube or Facebook, which allow users to take part in various online activities. They allow the users to create content, where it is not necessary for them to comprehend how technology is working, which has created wide digital divide between the passive users and ones with technical knowledge and skill. A majority of passive content creators that interact via the use of Web 2.0 (that comprise of posting status updates, tweeting, uploading videos and photos) are not actually interacting with true technology. References Arrington, M., July 15, 2006. Odeo releases Twttr.  TechCrunch. AOL, [online] avaiable http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/15/is-twttr-interesting [accessed on 1st December 2012] Bolter, J., and Grusin, R., 2000. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Burke, K., 1984. Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, 3rd edition. 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