Social Media Research Paper

Submitted By cnweaver
Words: 1857
Pages: 8

English 101, Section 36/55
Social Media Paper
October 2, 2012
Draft 31/4
Track changes: off
Word count: 1205 How do you keep in touch with people in your life these days? Do you text them? Facebook them? Skype them? Or like thousands of other people in today’s society do you tweet at them? Tweeting is essentially the simple idea of expressing your thoughts in short blips to whoever may chose to follow you. In my paper I will explain Twitter and its terminology more in depth while also explaining how kids my age, organizations and authors like E L James use Twitter. Intro Twitter is a social media site based mainly on allowing the user to express tid-bits of their thoughts and feelings in 1460 characters. It works by creating an account and picking a username. Your username holds the most importance , this will be vital to your Twitter experienceaccount. These are usually clever or witty play offs of your name or something as simple as @E_L_James. One of the first steps after creating your account and choosing your username is following other people’s accounts. These could be friends, relatives, actors or actresses, authors or organizations, etc. . Jjust about anyone or anything that you are interested in following. The website walks you through every step in getting started and is virtually fool proofspoon feeds you every step making it a very simple process in getting started. Once you’ve choose at least ten followed a few accounts to follow you return to your “Timeline” or the listing of any tweet, any account you follow posts. Your timeline also acts your essential homepage for Twitter.And from there you can also compose tweets of your own, see who is tweeting at you and view our own profile. Naturally, your profile is completely customizable and you have the option to make everything private From your timeline you are given the choice to view your profile, adjust your profile or privacy settings or compose a tweet of your own.. A “tweet” is When you compose a tweet you get the chance to express your thought in 1460 characters , here you can “mention a friend, or more simply put, send a tweet that is directed at them by placing an @ symbol before their user name. long, where you can include friends’ username and tweet at them, or just express an opinion, question or any information you’d like to get across to your followers.
Twitter’s main purpose is to keep others informed and up to date on the happenings and thoughts of its users; however, it serves several other purposes as well. If you’re an organization on Twitter trying to persuade your followers to participate, it might help to a system that allows you to spread the word to a massive group of people. Because of the ability for your tweets to get retweeted, or basically tweeted again by one of your followers to all of their followers to see, it is effective at reaching a broad spectrum of people. A good example of this would be the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation. They spend an abundant amount of time thanking participants of their Race for a Cure runs in different cities and encouraging their followers to register for their runs in their towns. “Denver! RT But then, on the other hand Twitter can be a strong tool used to inform audiences. Susan G Komen Foundation tweeted on September 17th “What can you expect from the late effects of s its followers to learn more about the effects of breast cancer treatment.
Advertising creates yet another prime example of the versatility Twitter offers. An advertising class here at the university takes advantage of Twitter in it’s curriculum and encourages the students to create an account and immerse themselves in the world of 140 character thoughts. They use the site for a multitude of group projects and work by following magazines and even the presidential candidates, who as I’m sure you can guess, utilizes Twitter during campaign seasons to bring attention to why they would be good president for a second term. And