Would an @-reply by any name smell as sweet? For those of you who know, one of my graduation requirements is to write a senior thesis. I am performing research about the usage of Twitter with respect to it's genres and registers. Meanwhile, when choosing my dataset, I considered the components that make a tweet effective and viral. So, I am asking "what's in a tweet?" Seeing as how I constantly run into the point in a conversation where someone says, "I hate Twitter" or "Isn't that just a bunch of status updates?" I would like to present Twitter in a way that Twitter fails to do explicitly. And to do so, I need to point out that, because it is so primitive, Twitter is not defined by it's interface, but by how it is used. So, let's start with the basics.
What can [read: do] people do on Twitter?
Tweet: Well, duh. Named the Word of 2009 by the American Dialect Society, the tweet is the essence of Twitter. If I have to describe in 140 characters what a tweet is, I would say the following; "A tweet is more complex than can be assumably understood. There's no way I can describe it in 140 characters. Something about Netspeak. LOL." There are some key words that I think I should explain. Because, let's face it, 140 characters really isn't enough to describe Twitter.
1) public - At first this seems like a really uninteresting word. But if you consider that text messages are around $.10 a message, then you might start to realize the significance of free mass communication. Still sound too much like [free] spam? Though complimentary meat-in-a-can is certainly hard to pass up, there is more. Not only do followers see this message, but anyone who visits their page can also see it (assuming their profile isn't locked). That's essentially how people gain followers and eventually credibility.
2) broadcast - This is where the idea of mass communication comes in. Because tweets are public, they can essentially be broadcast to all of the Internet - more directly to all of one's followers. So what is significant about broadcasting? Content. (Think about news stations.) Whenever I have to speak to a crowd I constantly think about this one element. What I say to my followers has to be relevant, concise, and accurate in order for them to maintain interest and to influence others to follow me. Many will argue that there are tons of tweets out there that do none of these things. I totally agree. But those people either cater to a different audience or they just don't know how to use Twitter effectively. My good friend, Mattt, said it best. Chances are, if someone tweets something that you don't understand or find irrelevant, it wasn't meant for you. In the same vein, there's a reason why everyone doesn't follow everyone. That would just be silly. Followers choose who they follow based on content, genre, and register. And [effective] Twitter users constantly have their followers in mind when composing a new tweet - whether they like to admit it or not.
3) followers - I keep mentioning this word. What's up with all this following business anyway? Well I'll get to that. Be patient.
4) 140 characters - This is something I'm still trying to fully understand. But I think it has to do with the human attention span. If you ask someone whether they would rather read a best-selling novel or an amusing text message, you would probably find that most people would read the text message and go as far as glance at the cover of said book. They might read the back of the book, but even then, it's a shortened version of the full text. Humans are apparently not hard-wired to read large texts or for long periods of time - at least not in their current evolutionary stage. Also, short messages are much easier to remember and recall than a novel. There's also a unique difference between either genre-type that I like to call "idea-mass" which is essentially the quantity of thoughts in an utterance. In a book there are hundreds maybe thousands of ideas; in a tweet, maybe two or three. Though they usually all go together somehow. If they don't it's probably an ineffective tweet or won't obtain a captive audience. Either way, it's so much easier and more enjoyable to absorb one or two ideas than a cryptic bible of them.
5) links and mentions - Links are portals to worlds beyond 140 characters. And in these lands there are fewer limits, longer texts, and multimodal dimensions for those who like to actually read (or for those who don't). Mentions do just that with people. They provide an opportunity to see who you are tweeting about by giving a link to their Twitter profile and their most recent set of tweets. Not to mention (no pun intended) when using this structure, the person mentioned also gets a little nudge about the mention, depending on their client. (Clients have their own completely different story to tell.) There are also different types of "mentions." There's the reply mention that sends a public message to that user in reply to something they tweeted. There's the tweet that merely mentions the user's handle to refer to them publicly. Then there's the debatable third type which is public but not clearly a replied or directed message or a broadcast giving a shout out. The perfect example of this is the retweet. (That's a whole topic on it's own. No really, keep reading!) Then, of course, people use multiple mentions of different types within the same tweet.
Retweet: This has a history. It all started with the simple RT syntax which usually precedes the user's handle with their original message (though their handle sometimes goes at the end depending on the client). Some people retweet this way with their own short commentary at the beginning. This commentary could be anything from an addendum to a straight reply to the original author. Either way, the comment is public and often adding commentary makes a retweet more interesting and/or unique. Then, in November of 2009, the new retweet was set loose. Now all you have to do is click a button and the tweet would be "echoed," preserving the original author's message in it's entirety and their icon. Personally, I think this new feature has a much different connotation than the older version. In a way, it is less selective because the user is unable to alter or add anything. But on the other hand, the old retweet still exists. One might re-coin the old retweet as a "quote" or a "reference" or even a "call-out." With this new retweet, the retweeter is further removed from the message and misuse and spamming become potentially more common. Nonetheless, there are several different purposes of the retweet: quoting, referencing, calling someone out, or echoing what someone tweeted; there are almost certainly others.
What can [read: do] people do on Twitter?
Tweet: Well, duh. Named the Word of 2009 by the American Dialect Society, the tweet is the essence of Twitter. If I have to describe in 140 characters what a tweet is, I would say the following; "A tweet is more complex than can be assumably understood. There's no way I can describe it in 140 characters. Something about Netspeak. LOL." There are some key words that I think I should explain. Because, let's face it, 140 characters really isn't enough to describe Twitter.
1) public - At first this seems like a really uninteresting word. But if you consider that text messages are around $.10 a message, then you might start to realize the significance of free mass communication. Still sound too much like [free] spam? Though complimentary meat-in-a-can is certainly hard to pass up, there is more. Not only do followers see this message, but anyone who visits their page can also see it (assuming their profile isn't locked). That's essentially how people gain followers and eventually credibility.
2) broadcast - This is where the idea of mass communication comes in. Because tweets are public, they can essentially be broadcast to all of the Internet - more directly to all of one's followers. So what is significant about broadcasting? Content. (Think about news stations.) Whenever I have to speak to a crowd I constantly think about this one element. What I say to my followers has to be relevant, concise, and accurate in order for them to maintain interest and to influence others to follow me. Many will argue that there are tons of tweets out there that do none of these things. I totally agree. But those people either cater to a different audience or they just don't know how to use Twitter effectively. My good friend, Mattt, said it best. Chances are, if someone tweets something that you don't understand or find irrelevant, it wasn't meant for you. In the same vein, there's a reason why everyone doesn't follow everyone. That would just be silly. Followers choose who they follow based on content, genre, and register. And [effective] Twitter users constantly have their followers in mind when composing a new tweet - whether they like to admit it or not.
3) followers - I keep mentioning this word. What's up with all this following business anyway? Well I'll get to that. Be patient.
4) 140 characters - This is something I'm still trying to fully understand. But I think it has to do with the human attention span. If you ask someone whether they would rather read a best-selling novel or an amusing text message, you would probably find that most people would read the text message and go as far as glance at the cover of said book. They might read the back of the book, but even then, it's a shortened version of the full text. Humans are apparently not hard-wired to read large texts or for long periods of time - at least not in their current evolutionary stage. Also, short messages are much easier to remember and recall than a novel. There's also a unique difference between either genre-type that I like to call "idea-mass" which is essentially the quantity of thoughts in an utterance. In a book there are hundreds maybe thousands of ideas; in a tweet, maybe two or three. Though they usually all go together somehow. If they don't it's probably an ineffective tweet or won't obtain a captive audience. Either way, it's so much easier and more enjoyable to absorb one or two ideas than a cryptic bible of them.
5) links and mentions - Links are portals to worlds beyond 140 characters. And in these lands there are fewer limits, longer texts, and multimodal dimensions for those who like to actually read (or for those who don't). Mentions do just that with people. They provide an opportunity to see who you are tweeting about by giving a link to their Twitter profile and their most recent set of tweets. Not to mention (no pun intended) when using this structure, the person mentioned also gets a little nudge about the mention, depending on their client. (Clients have their own completely different story to tell.) There are also different types of "mentions." There's the reply mention that sends a public message to that user in reply to something they tweeted. There's the tweet that merely mentions the user's handle to refer to them publicly. Then there's the debatable third type which is public but not clearly a replied or directed message or a broadcast giving a shout out. The perfect example of this is the retweet. (That's a whole topic on it's own. No really, keep reading!) Then, of course, people use multiple mentions of different types within the same tweet.
Retweet: This has a history. It all started with the simple RT syntax which usually precedes the user's handle with their original message (though their handle sometimes goes at the end depending on the client). Some people retweet this way with their own short commentary at the beginning. This commentary could be anything from an addendum to a straight reply to the original author. Either way, the comment is public and often adding commentary makes a retweet more interesting and/or unique. Then, in November of 2009, the new retweet was set loose. Now all you have to do is click a button and the tweet would be "echoed," preserving the original author's message in it's entirety and their icon. Personally, I think this new feature has a much different connotation than the older version. In a way, it is less selective because the user is unable to alter or add anything. But on the other hand, the old retweet still exists. One might re-coin the old retweet as a "quote" or a "reference" or even a "call-out." With this new retweet, the retweeter is further removed from the message and misuse and spamming become potentially more common. Nonetheless, there are several different purposes of the retweet: quoting, referencing, calling someone out, or echoing what someone tweeted; there are almost certainly others.
Direct Message: If you recognize [and ever used] "DM" then you're probably with me in saying that direct messages are pretty specialized. For one, they're private. So it has to be either unworthy of or too personal for a public audience. They are also limited to a conversation between only two users. And to use this feature most users utilize special client mechanisms or the website itself.
Follow: This is pretty straight forward. Users can follow what other users tweet. This might be because they are interested in what they have to say or in what they represent. Either way something about them brings the user to click the "follow" button. It's probably important to note that following is not equivalent to friending. Friending implies that you both know each other (this is cyberspace so that's the only requirement for cyber friendship). But for following, the target user may not even know you exist or that you are following them. Follow is to Twitter as subscribe is to the blogosphere. And it's not uncommon for users to have personal "unfollow" sessions where they sit down and determine who is still worth reading and who is now considered spam. (I should know. I just lost three followers the other day.) Ironically, I find it more socially acceptable to unfollow someone than to unfriend them on Facebook. This might be evidence to suggest that Twitter is less of a social network and more of a reader's network or an amateur publisher's network.
In the context of following, there's something I like to call "Twitter affluence" which is reflected, most explicitly, by the ratio of followers to following; The higher the ratio, the more viral the user appears to be. It can also be explicitly reflected by the amount of retweets that person obtains. This idea of affluence is also greatly dependent on a balance between personality and product. Is the Twitter user more interested about telling their followers about their life by the minute? Or are they trying to sell their personality and experiences as a literary product? If you haven't guessed already, one of the main arguments in my thesis is that there is a distinction between public communication and personal broadcast; the former being quasi-standard communication (and often illocution), the latter being the unique adaptation of interesting thoughts in relation to the user's environment and experiences which is also relevant to their audience.
So maybe Twitter really isn't just 140 character updates of someone's mundane activities. Maybe there's a little more than that inside the tweet.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/powerpig
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