Twitter my Facebook

By Nikki Keck
The minute you log onto Facebook it is mass chaos. You are bombarded with numerous group invitations and requests to take three of the same surveys, you have been "tagged" in 34 pictures and "poked" four times, and nine people want to be your "friend". The minute you log onto Twitter, the only question is, "What are you doing right now?"

Twitter is similar to Facebook in many ways. It's a free social network which allows its users to answer the question "What are you doing right now?" You have followers, which are like Facebook friends and you "tweet" just like you update your Facebook statues only you do it in 140 characters or less.

This restraint on the amount of words you can use has started a trend called "micro-blogging" Many journalists, politicians, news stations and bloggers use Twitter to get small but important pieces of information out to their followers.

When you log into your Twitter account you see small posts from your followers that say what they are doing. To some this might seem simple and boring but to others it's exactly what they're looking for. Twitter eliminates all the extra stuff of Facebook. So instead of logging on and being invited by 12 different people to "sace the world, join mafia wars or do a survey" you only see what you want.

"If you're a sentimentalist and you need pictures and music then you can upload pictures from twitpic and music from blip.fm. So, in essence, you're not losing anything, just stripping it down and making it easier," said "twitaholic" Meghan Fisher. " I tweet about three times every hour," said Fisher. "It's easier to use then Facebook because you don't need an internet connection, anyone that can text can tweet."

This unique advantage has made Twitter useful during disaster. Eye witnesses to the plane crash in the Hudson River instantly posted pictures on Twitter to help outsiders understand what had happened. Many people used Twitter to recieve minute by minute updates on the wildfires in California this past fall. Twitter is more useful than TV, internet or radio because people can get information on the run. They don't need or have anything but a cell phone. CNN is now the leading page on Twitter with the highest amount of followers.

There have also been many reports of congress using Twitter. Almost 20 congressmen posted "tweets" during President Obama's address to congress back in February.
Twitter is simple, accessivle from cell phones and school computers, but only a small amount of Harbor students are "twitterers"

"A lot of people associate it as being the same as Facebook and they don't want two of the same thing. I also don't think that very many people try it out. So it's not that they haven't heard of it, just that they haven't tried it," said Amanda Furstenberg.

The truth is, Twitter is becoming more popular every month and older networks like MySpace are reporting 20% loss in account activity. Twitter is just for quick personal news but it makes Facebook look like old news.