When I first heard about twitter, and the rapid growth of its users, I failed to see what the hype was all about. The fact that twitter limited its users' posts to under one hundred forty characters seemed to contradict the very purpose of the digital world. Why put a limit on the amount of words one could post? Hadn't the purpose of transforming words on a page to bits been to allow users to write as much as they wanted, no longer constricted by the limitations of the physical world? Struggling to understand why twitter had become so enormously popular in recent months, I pooled my knowledge together to come up with the reason why twitter is loved by so many.
In my New Media Frontiers Class, my classmates and I have discussed how the digital age has transformed the current generation’s desires, thoughts, and overall perspective on life. Because new technologies have made all sorts of knowledge and activities available on the web with unprecedented speed, most people have developed a short attention span. Like kids at a candy store, users on the internet are attracted to everything. Rather than spending time on one particular topic, users are restless, constantly looking for something new and exciting that requires little time.
Twitter, with it's short updates, caters to the new generation of users who want a quick fix. As the Internet has made all knowledge more accessible and faster to obtain, our desire to know what everyone is up to in the shortest amount of time possible has increased dramatically. As a result a short recap of one’s thoughts in fewer than one hundred and forty characters is just what the new generation of users desires.
The exponential growth of twitter over the last few months can be attributed to what the digital age has been accomplishing ever since its birth decades ago. As new technologies continue to make knowledge more accessible, our attention spans will grow smaller, thus making sites like twitter more attractive, forcing it's users to provide simple, quick updates. One might ask whether our growing desire for a "quick fix," with sites like twitter, will prevent us from appreciating what takes time?
Short and sweet!
ReplyDeleteI still feel that Twitter is one of the most over-hyped websites of my lifetime. while its concept is interesting, the page itself certainly does not warrant the attention it has been given.
ReplyDeleteI increasingly feel that its popularity is due only too the medias panic and compulsive need to find some sort of life raft they can 'grab on to in the rising technology tide.