The Insider

Issue date: 6/19/09 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Jessica Bourse Social networking is as old as civilization itself, but Twitter makes communication almost instantaneous.

"What's Twitter?" If I had a dollar for every time I've heard this question, I'd be rich. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. I'd probably have an iPod - a really, really nice iPod.

It seems in the past five years, the world has gone a-twitter. The Internet, as well as the never-ending rise in technology, has made connecting with people easier than ever. Social networking services, such as Facebook and Twitter, have taken people from different parts of the world and bound them together with a common interest, creating global communities with the click of a mouse.

Social networking is not a modern phenomenon; it is a major part of who we are as a social species. Ever since man first walked on the Earth, he has tried to communicate with his fellow human, creating languages, alphabets and art to convey his message. But how do you communicate with someone who lives far away?

One of the first courier services was created by the Egyptians around 2,000 B.C., where messengers would travel by horse or foot throughout the empire, spreading the pharaohs' decrees - social networking was on the move.

The ancient Egyptians and Greeks used an old-fashioned version of today's Twitter: homing pigeons. These pigeons were the direct ancestors of the urban feral birds that poop on your windshield. The birds were domesticated and then trained to travel long distances, carrying small messages written on a thin strip of paper, which was rolled up and tied to the bird's foot. Up until the 1950s, the U.S. Army used homing pigeons to carry messages from the trenches.

"But, what is Twitter?"

Twitter is a free social networking service that works like a micro-blog. A blog, or a Web log, is an online journal, where users (or bloggers) can create entries about their lives, thoughts or interests. It is up to the blogger's discretion when to update their blog. Twitter is considered a micro-blog because each update, also known as a "tweet," can only be up to 140-characters long.

Twitter was designed to answer one question: What are you doing? Subscribers to your account, or followers, can receive tweets in real-time on their Twitter homepage, as a text message sent directly to their phone, or through various Twitter-friendly programs, called applications, for computers and "smart phones" such as a Blackberry or iPhone.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools