The Whole Story

The Story

Why this story is important: This story is important because a lot of students have heard about Twitter, but they are not sure exactly what it is. Twitter is another way for people to maintain constant communication with friends and family. VSU has a Twitter account and so this story explains what the service is and why VSU has an account.

What I did to get this story: I researched Twitter online and found out all of the information on the company who created the service and I found out about the service itself. I also created my own account so that I could see first hand how the service worked.

Twitter is way to keep in constant contact with family, friends and co-workers by answering one simple question: “what are you doing.”

According to Twitter’s official Web-site, www.twitter.com, twitter is a free service and allows users to keep in touch by using the Internet, text messaging and instant messenging.

The service uses simple updates, no longer then 140 words, to provide people with constant communication with one another.

Twitter’s Web-site states that even simple updates about a person are meaningful and important to friends and family. A tutorial video on the web site explains how Twitter works and claims that Twitter is important because it makes it possible for people to keep in touch even between emails and blog entries.

Even though Twitter provides quick, constant contact with people, the service does allow users to set “quiet times” so that the user will not be interrupted.

In March 2006, the first prototype of twitter was created out of the offices of Obvious, a creative environment, located in San Francisco. The following August, Twitter was publicly launched. Due to the quick growth in popularity, Twitter moved outside of Obvious and became Twitter incorporated in May 2007.

Anyone who is 13 and older can join Twitter. Twitter is free and the only thing needed to join is an email account. Once a member, the user can look up friends and decide who to “follow.”

On Twitter, “following” allows the user to see another user’s updates. VSU news web page, www.valdosta.edu/news, has a twitter account. The link on the page will take students directly to the VSU news Twitter account, where students can follow the latest updates of VSU news.