Why I Like Twitter

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When I originally joined twitter, I played around with it for a few hours and then gave up because quite simply - it looked too complicated and I didn't get it.


Months later, I was convinced to give it a second try. And I'm glad I was intrigued to do so because now is it probably one of my primary sources to get the news (I talked about this here). This was just around the time when it seemed as if all the journalist and broadcast news organizations were creating twitter accounts as another way to stream the news. At this point, it's been about a year since twitter became really popular amongst journalists and news reporters and other public figures.


What I love about twitter is that I can follow whatever I am interested about from my laptop or my phone ... or anywhere else where I'll have access to twitter. Say I'm sitting in class or in the student center in between classes and can't watch the news coverage of something I really want to be watching. Chances are someone many people are tweeting quotes or paraphrasing the content of whatever is currently happening that I am missing.


For example when the whole 'balloon-boy' fiasco was happening, I was sitting in a class done the assignment I was supposed to be doing and suddenly I started getting tweets about the whole mess from the start and through all of its twists and turns.


Twitter has not only been great for news - sensational, real or otherwise, but it's great for having interactive discussion with others who care about what you care about. If you agree, great... if you don't - I think it's even better.


As I was watching Obama's SOTU address, I was following the trending topic and getting to read other people's thoughts live and have a conversation about something I care about with other people who care about the same thing. I don't know about you, but I feel like in my social group, very few people care about the same things as I do. It puts new media to a whole new level.


Not only that, nowadays, I probably access most of the articles I ready daily off of twitter from what others share in their tweets or what organizations like magazines tweet. Instead of going to different websites to find articles that are of interest to me or anything like that, they are all brought to me in one central location.   


As 2009 drew to an end, it was even cool to look through "Top Twitter Trends of 2009" which summarized what we as a collective groups of people from across the world found most important and worthy of attention across a variety of categories. 


It always amazes me when people compare twitter to facebook because they two could not be any more different and have two completely different purposes.


Do you use twitter? What do you like most about it? Or what do you use it most for? If you don't use it - is there any particular reason or you just don't see a need for it?



P.S. Don't forget to leave me a comment below on your thoughts! As always, I'd love to hear from you.