9/13/2011: 'Harness Twitter, Change the World'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-innovations/harness-twitter-change-the-world/2011/09/05/gIQANzKL4J_story.html

Claire Ortiz, a social innovation leader for Twitter, Inc, wrote this article to show readers how easily they can tweet their way to fame, fortune, or social justice. Twitter, a social networking site based off 'tweets' about what someone is doing at a given moment, started out as a way for people to keep in contact and know what their friends were up to. It personally took me until this school year to actually create a twitter account-  up until recently, I (along with large quantities of the population) thought twitter was stupid. Who needs to know exactly what you're doing at any given point in time? I don't care if you're about to shower- tell me something worthwhile.

According to Ortiz, though, twitter users listened to the cries of 'tell me something I actually care about reading!' and have been using the social networking site to further social justice, politics, club/organization popularity, and raise awareness for charities, events, fundraisers, and causes. Charities can now tell you to 'follow' them on twitter (which gives you the opportunity to receive updates as the charity or other followers send them) so you know what's going on. Better yet, with twitter, you can give solid feedback by 'replying to a tweet'. Simply send a message back to the original poster, and it shows up in their news feed or alerts. This is more effective, in my opinion, than a facebook fan page- for more than one reason, as well. For starters, when someone replies to a tweet, not everyone can read it- only those following the person who made the reply tweet in the first place. This keeps people from antagonizing other fans, and gives the organization more of an opportunity to read single comments without them compounding like they do on Facebook. In addition, you can respond to someone's tweet, even if they don't follow you. A lot of organizations, therefore, can receive fan responses without receiving updates every single time said fan posts something. Finally, twitter has this great concept called 'retweeting'. This is like playing telephone, but with much more clarity. By clicking the 'retweet' button on a tweet someone wants to spread the word about, it becomes a tweet of their own- therefore enabling all their friends to read it.


I thought this article was interesting, not only because it offers a new perspective on furthering social justice through multimedia development, but because I personally am just getting into Twitter myself. It's actually horridly addicting- and is perfect for all the clubs, organizations, and charities I'm a part of, myself.