I was asked to write a three paragraph introduction to Twitter for an Indonesian sister magazine. This is what I ended up writing.
In English.
Accidentally.
I had to translate the entire thing afterwards. Obviously my piece got cut down to pieces because of space constraints, it will end up looking very different to this one.
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Blackberry owners are no longer the only people who walk around looking at their gadgets and twiddling thumbs at them. Regular people with regular mobile phones are joining in the new look of the 21st century all thanks to Twitter. This relatively new kind of blogging has taken the world country by country since 2006.
Developed by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, Twitter is a service that lets you post short updates (or tweets) of whatever it is that you’re currently doing or thinking of. You can follow other people on twitter and they can also follow you. If you don’t like certain people following you and read what you tweet, you can block them. Likewise, you can stop following someone if you no longer enjoy what they tweet.
If you think Facebook is like your home on the internet, Twitter is the corner coffee shop where you and your friends hang out. These days though, you don’t just say what you are doing anymore, you can post questions, links to anything you find interesting on the internet and even have conversations with your friends either publicly or privately.
The concept became so popular that late last year Facebook adopted the style for its own status message and even asked a similar question. Twitter asks, “What are you doing?”, while Facebook asks, “What are you doing right now?”
Like instant messenger services, you can send a message to one or more people by adding “@” in front of their Twitter name or “D” to send a direct (private) message that only your friend can see. For example, asking @deon what’s makemac.com? will send that tweet to deon and anyone who follows both you and deon. Sending D deon what’s makemac.com? will only send it to deon.
Twitter started growing quickly after it was introduced and won an award at South by Sothwest, a music/interactive/film festival in Austin, Texas and became even larger in 2008 after Barack Obama’s campaign began using Twitter as one of their online presence.
Other politicians, athletes, musicians and actors have also started using Twitter such as Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Stephen Fry, Britney Spears, Fred Durst, Lily Allen, Shaquille O’Neal, and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
AuliaSays 