Oprah and Obama
are among those who
have signed up to
the SMS of the internet
Forget Facebook,the social networking website which has for five years had 200 million people sign up.It may be the most visited site in the world,but there is a new contender for the web domination-Twitter.
Popularly known as the "SMS of internet"-because an update is usually 140 characters-Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service lets its users send and read other user's updates or tweets.
In February,compete.com blog entry ranked Twitter as the third most used social network(Facebook being the largest,followed by MysSpace)with the number of unique monthly visitors put at roughly six million and the number of monthly visits at 55million.
Last month a Nielsen.com blog ranked Twitter as the fastest growing site in the Member Communities category for February 2009.Twitter had a growth of 1,382 per cent,Zimbio had a growth of 240 per cent.
So big is Twitter that some of the world biggest celebrities have been unable to stay away from its allure something they managed to do with Facebook.
Oprah Winfrey joined the first growing trend and announced it to the world when she sent her first "tweet" last friday and has already amassed more than 514,790 followers.
It might have been recieved with open arms ,but not everybody was amused by her joining,with many users blaming her popularity for causing the site to slow down.On April 17,the richest woman on earch devoted her entire show to a discussion and demonstration of the instant-message social networking site.Afterwards,traffic to Twitter shot up a whopping 43 per cent,market tracker Hitwise reported.
Her profile has also been the target of a "worm attack"-which hijacks users profiles and sends rogue tweets from their accounts.
Twitter founder,Evan Willams,who appeared on Oprah the day she launched her feed,was forced to publicly deny the problem was caused by her profile.
He told followers her arrival had a 'Huge effect" on Friday but his team 'kept it under control"."Site slowness today had nothing to do with Oprah,"he insisted.
The first thing she posted on her Twitter page was;"Hi Twitters.Thank you for a warm welcome.Feeling really 21st Century."
Some of her Twitter mates are NBA star Shaquille O'neil,Actress Demi Moore and her husband Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres.
Others stars who have become popular on Twitter include Diddy,Larry King,50 cent,Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
Politicians have not been left behind.Several 2008 US presidential campaigns used Twitter as a publicity mechanism,including US President Barrack Obama.Twitter use increased 43 per cent on election day.
David Saranga of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that on December 30,2008,Israel would be the the first government to hold a worldwide press conference via Twitter to take questions from the public about the war against Hamas in Gaza.
Organizations have also been sucked into it in droves with media companies leading the pack.CNN,ESPN,Daily Nation,Easy FM,NTV,Time magazine and The New York Time can be followed on Twitter where they give updates on the big stories they are running and also use the same media to get breaking news stories.
The use of Twitter by victims,bystanders,and the public to gather news and coordinate responce to the November 2008 Mumbai siege led CNN to call it "the day social media appeared to come of age"
When a plane crashed near Schipol Airport Amsterdam,the news media learnt about it through people sending "tweets' of the accident to newsrooms.
The title of the most followed celebrity on Twitter today belongs to Ashton Kutcher who was the first user to reach the one million follower mark in a closely and highly publicized competion with the CNN"Breaking News" account.
Kutcher beat CNN to the top post by a few hundred followers.Singer Britney Spears is the the third most followed.
Although traditional journalism may be prefferd the way it is,Twitter does bring a new wave of "citizen journalism",allowing an eyewitness to report real time.
