The most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it's doing to us. It's what we're doing to it.' Johnson, S 2009
The twitter fad hit hard and fast. But many were unimpressed; not understanding how anyone would be interested in 'blogging' only 140 characters. Suddenly useless communication was becoming more interesting everyday and everyone else's business was becoming our business.
Probably the strangest thing about Twitter is its air of 'stalker-ness'. You can follow whoever you want and see exactly what they are up to. We used to all have our little black books full of meticulously collected addresses, emails and phone numbers of our family and favorites. Now we can simply search a name and click 'follow' and suddenly we are in their pockets 'stalking' their daily actions.In saying this it is clear that platforms such as Twitter are beginning to change the very fabric of communication; weaving us together in new and very strange ways. These are changes that are slow and sometimes unnoticeable but a certainly steady. As we communicate and engage with more people, our means of doing are changing along with the times. Twitter, as much as any other site, is helping to launch and enable this new era of communication. Like it or not, we have entered a completely new era in in who we communicate with and how we communicate with them. And central to this is social media sites like Twitter.
Johnson, S 2009,'How Twitter will change the way we live', Time, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1902818-1,00.html
I remember when I used to have an address book.. or I had a list of my friends names, numbers (home numbers!) and addresses. Now none of this is required. I can contact them quickly via sms, call or SNS which are all readily available for me on my phone. Yes this has to do with media convergence.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time is it really stalking if they are a close friend of yours? Yes adding the hot guy who you saw out on the weekend is stalking but in all honesty who sits at the computer all day seeing what their friends are up to. I find facebook to be more common for "stalking" as there are capabilities to add folders of photos and more information about yourself etc. Although I only use twitter for uni purposes it is definitely more of an informative SNS.
SNS are definitely weaving us together in ways we otherwise wouldn't have thought possible.. but what is next from here, live streaming showing your friends every move?
I agree with you on the 'stalker-ness'. It's not like Facebook where you can accept or decline who you want to see your page. With Twitter, a simple name search allows you to follow whoever you want!
ReplyDeleteTwitter has created a new wave of communication. I think the reading by Johnson really opened alot of our eyes as to how Twitter operates, and the power it has over modern communication methods.
Hey Annie, I think that along with communication technologies like Twitter, there is a growing understanding (albeit slower than it should be) of our responsibilities when we post on these sites. As more people get into trouble with employers for what is posted on facebook, for example, they are starting to learn to either change their privacy settings or filter what is posted more carefully. Twitter may be a bit more difficult to learn to self-censor, as it is so immediate, but I'm not sure if it is that huge a problem for most users. As EliseBoonstra points out, most people who follow you on Twitter are already your friends, and from what I've seen, a lot of people's posts on the site are retweets, statements they think are witty, and public conversations... there are not as many 'this is where I am and what I'm doing right now' posts as what I thought there would be. But there are still many people that I think, in the near future, will begin to reconsider how much information they post via Twitter and the like.
ReplyDeleteSee, I disagree with the use of the term 'stalking' on a pretty basic point: "stalking" implies that people are finding information or following movements without someone's knowledge or consent. I would say that on Twitter, a user can control that--they can make themselves private.
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