When Twitter first launched in 2007, few would have expected it to go on to boast more than 100 million viewers worldwide. Allowing only 140 characters to post messages seemed restrictive, and skeptics felt it was pointless to keep people updated on the mundane tasks one does during the day. But Twitter has become a huge social network, with both everyday folk and celebrities using it to give each other a peek into their day to day lives.
While it is easy to dismiss the site as an unnecessary time killer, and mock users for thinking their lives are important enough that they need to constantly update others, that misses the big picture; that the site has become a phenomenon that unites people from all walks of life (and by focusing solely on status updates, it is much less frustrating and easier to navigate than sites like Facebook).
More importantly, there are those on Twitter who do lead interesting lives worth following, and many celebrities use it as a way to stay in touch with their fans. News sites like Newsweek use it as a way to streamline articles and stories to their followers, and comedians use their accounts as an extension of their stage persona, cracking short but sweet 140 character jokes.
So Twitter has shown that it can be more than simply stating "I'm doing __ now." But is there more relevancy that it can offer?
"Fake" Is The Real Thing
There has been a wave of "spoof" Twitter accounts; anonymous accounts pretending to be people (in many cases fictional) that they obviously are not. Users like @God_Damn_Batman build a character through their tweets, satirizing the person or topic they have based themselves on. The most recent and possibly well known example is @BPGlobalPR. A riff off of the actual companies poor PR campaign in the aftermath of the Gulf Coast oil spill, this "fake" account has become more popular than BP's real Twitter feed, and it's ridiculous and awkward tweets are often easy to confuse with the actual statements BP releases.
While there are many other fake Twitter accounts that serve as great examples of satire, they are still mainly "updates" of these fictional worlds. While still creative, it does not offer the narrative arc found in other media that can be used to really tell a story. But that is changing.
Twitter Fiction
Believe it or not, Twitter has been used to write short stories, and is getting more and more popular. Many writers are taking the site beyond the "What am I doing now" mentality and used it to publish works of fiction. This may seem absurd to some; after all, 140 characters is not a lot to work with. But the perceived limitations serve only as a way to fuel creativity, which many see as a good thing.
Some have taken to micro-stories; stories that are contained within the 140 character limit. This is actually nothing new. Ernest Hemingway reportedly considered his best piece of prose the very short and to the point "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn." And that still leaves 108 characters to work with. It's a way to break a story down to it's most fundamental state, and could be a great addition to the daily Twitter feed full of people talking about themselves.
Serial stories have also popped up on Twitter. Authors break their stories up into 140 character chunks, and use tags to tie them together. This serialized format has some interesting side effects, mainly that by having to wait for the next line of dialogue or sentence creates a greater sense of anticipation as the story progresses. Of course, this could also cause many less patient users to lose interest.
Evolving Medium
The internet has radically changed much about how we go about our days, and it's effects are far reaching. As the global social network continues to evolve, so do our expectations for how it is used. Twitter may have started out as simply a bulletin board for what your friends are up to, but as with most online innovations, it has grown into something more.
Timothy Gaydos - I attended Ohio University for four years, studying Video Production and Film, earning a BA in Science and Communications from the Scripps ...
