Twitter Today

Since the boom in the use of social media platforms over the last decade, the direction content shared on these platforms has shifted. With the steady decline of conventional news outlets such as newspapers and broadcast television, social media has picked up the slack regardless of how factual the “news” turns out to be. With new technology allowing mobile access to a variety of platforms anybody can view content from anywhere they get internet service. This concept of unlimited access ensures that people are constantly connected and bombarded with content within these platforms. Because of this seemingly unlimited access, the use of social media has shifted from a person-to-person dynamic to a business-to-person concept so that organizations can target their audiences around the clock. With the shift in marketing, it can be difficult to weed through feeds on platforms such as twitter and Instagram to get to the content that matters to the individual. This has caused an issue of over-stimulation as information is pouring from every direction from sources that have no outstanding credibility, in turn one cannot differentiate the truth from something that may be distorted or completely false. Social media has been flipped from a community networking tool to an environment where anyone can pedal any information, true or false, with almost no consequences.

Twitter has and currently is being used by a multitude of journalistic and political outlets. From local news stations to high-ranking political figures, twitter has been the platform of choice to deliver news and snippets of events happening around the world. From a localized view, the Buffalo NBC affiliate on channel 2, WGRZ, produces many headlines on twitter that will instantaneously reach viewers, as opposed to nightly news coverage where the hours old information is being handed off like it is currently happening. By receiving local and national news instantly, the engagement is much higher on a social media platform. Stories such a shooting that occurred minutes before the post was made or an announcement of a terrorist leader being pronounced dead, these stories are much more effective in short tweets as they are happening as opposed to a traditional news story being told several hours later. From individual accounts ran by political figures such as President Trump, one can see the same type of content being delivered but it may not be as credible or factual. In a series of tweets from late October 2019, President Trump ensured the deteriorating situation between Turkey and Syria was in fact safe and stable. He said that the Kurdish militia who we are currently allies with were not in danger and are much safer now that the U.S. has pulled out of the country. From credible sources such as journalistic fact-checking database www.politifact.com and Dan Dale from CNN, those statements have been proven false, as the Kurds have been pushed back and attacked by Turkish forces and are being treated as a terrorist threat just as ISIS is being recognized as. This is just one example of how twitter has been abused to convey false information with no consequences. Shifting to a marketing view, many organizations and companies use twitter to advertise their products, usually quite successfully. Specifically, a campaign ran by Calvin Klein where users were instructed to share photos of themselves wearing Calvin Klein attire and using the hashtag #inmycalvins to generate buzz about the company while also running a recognition contest. This type of engagement by an organization proved successful by Calvin Klein because of its incentive to offer a tangible reward for performing something simple on a social media platform. Other organizations use giveaways and collaborations to boost visibility and engagement with followers and potential customers.

Anybody who is anybody in today’s society that wants to increase their reputation strives to use some sort of platform in social media. Users on twitter have a wide range of demographics and anyone can find at least one account they are interested in. For example, if someone has a passion for photography and nature, they might consider following National Geographic for their content relating to both subjects, or if someone has an interest in franchise companies and they want to study their engagement tactics they can follow Taco Bell or Wendy’s. Or if someone is viewed as entertaining solely for their personality and the way they conduct themselves, for better or worse, someone can follow a controversial character such as Jefferee Star or Antonio Brown, who has recently been dubbed insane because of his twitter content.

Twitter has been described as “micro-blogging” because of its short character count restrictions that get lost in the vast sea of content. These restrictions force the user to be concise and witty to get their point across. Compared to traditional blogging, where the user can expand on any issue to any extent they please, Twitter has to be short and sweet while retaining the same or similar effectiveness of its content. Twitter is quite similar in many ways except for its need to be brief, and in today’s social environment brevity is key to generating engagement in the jungle of social media.