Twitter in the Modern Age

Twitter is an online social networking service and micro blogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets", says Wikipedia. Twitter was launched in July of 2006 and has since rapidly gained popularity all over the world. With well over 300 million users in 2011 twitter is now one of the most used social networking websites today. The community of twitter is made up of all different types of people and that is one of the things that makes twitter such a unique site. Users can utilize twitter in many different ways, such as making new friends, to keep in contact with old friends and family, and even as an online diary in a sense. On twitter unlike the all so popular "Facebook" site you can showcase some of your individuality by choosing a unique username, bio, and profile background and colors!

I joined twitter in 2009 when I was still a high school student, at this time not many students at my school had twitter accounts, and I just used it to keep up with the whereabouts and doings of my favorite singers, actors, comedians, and rappers. I had accumulated only around two hundred tweets within a year and hardly even talked to anyone on the website. Since 2009 I have racked up over sixty thousand tweets and have accumulated over eight thousand "followers" on the website! I have since realized that twitter is an amazing way to keep in contact with my friends back home in Florida, my family in Ohio, and my friends that have since moved all around the United States. Twitter has also been a great way for me to vent in a healthy way, my opinions and thoughts of things that are going on in the world and even my life. "I personally love twitter, I meet new people almost every day on there that share some of the same interests as me; and that's nice to know!" my best friend Kassandra spoke of the website.

Not all people feel that twitter is as amazing as me and best friend do though "Seems like yet another way for people to stalk and be in your business if you ask me" said my grandfather, which in a way could be correct. If used the wrong way by the wrong people, the social networking site could indeed be another way for someone to track your whereabouts, seeing as how it has the ability to tell your twitter followers your location if enabled. I had a simple answer for my grandfather, to prevent the wrong people knowing your whereabouts through twitter; you could simply set your "tweets" which is basically your twitter profile to private and only the people that you authorize to see your tweets will be able to.

Through twitter you can keep up with the doings of your family members and friends without actually talking to them all of the time. Although this is great this could also be a con to the site, seeing as how you visually see what your friends are doing, you may feel as if you don't have