Deep Dive - Twitter

Social Technology Deep Dive: Twitter

Assignment #2

July 7, 2014

03-60-209-91

Social Media & Mobile Technology for End Users

For: Professor Kristina Verner

Justine Longo103394842

Running head: SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY DEEP DIVE: TWITTER

SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY DEEP DIVE: TWITTER

Social Technology Deep Dive: Twitter

Companies are no longer able to stick to traditional advertising and media to

reach their customers; they must expand to new, and more effective, marketing and

advertising techniques to keep up with their competitors. Twitter offers businesses an

easy, instant connection with their customers allowing them the freedom to share, create,

learn, and improve their products and fan base. With over 255 million monthly active

users, and 500 million Twitters sent per day, getting your message out there has never

been so easy (Twitter, 2014).

Twitter allows you to micro-blog on the go, keep up with your friends, family,

favourite companies, actors, and anyone else you choose to “follow.” It is “content that

brings the world closer through conversation” created by the customers, for the customers

(Forbes, 2014). This paper will show you how having a Twitter account cannot only help

grow your brands following and customer base, but increase brand loyalty, help to

promote and gain new ideas, show you future features and tools, ethical considerations,

and solutions and opportunities Twitter can provide for your and your company.

Product Overview

Twitter is a service for friends, family, coworkers, and strangers across the world

to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages.

Users write short updates, called “tweets” of 140 characters or fewer and send them out

into the “Twitter-sphere.” These messages are then posted to your profile, allowing your

followers, and other users to view, favourite, or “re-tweet” them.

The first tweet to ever be sent was posted by creator Jack Dorsey on March 21st

2006, reading, “just setting up my twttr” (Kern, 2013). This came after a long haul to

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make Twitter was it is. Twitter was first created in March of 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan

Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass (Carlson, 2011). Their mission was to give

everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.

These four founders were original creators of Obvious Corporation, which was an

umbrella organization they ran to help launch startup companies, before successfully

launching their own. Twitter became incorporated April 19th, 2007 and currently has 225

million active users and sees over 500 million tweets sent per day (Twitter, 2014).

Twitter currently ranks the second most popular social networking site globally

(Top 15, 2014), stepping outside the usual social networking site boundaries, limiting the

over sharing of information you may experience on other sites, such as Facebook. Micro-

blogging is really all consumers have time for in their busy lives, and Twitter is a quick,

easy, and accessible medium allowing users the freedom to say and post whatever is on

their mind.

Identification of Underlying Technologies

In August of 2007, Chris Messina, a social technology expert, and Twitter user,

sent out a tweet reading “how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in

#barcamp [msg]?” Suggesting the idea to group together tweets and information using a

pound sign to automatically hyperlink every message sent with the same tag to a common

page on the site. Twitter adopted the concept in 2007, and the hashtag has since become a

very popular tool for connecting and searching (Doctor, 2013).

The introduction of hashtags has also allowed Twitter to introduce “trending

topics” along users timelines, or “news feeds.” These topics are those being discussed

exponentially throughout Twitter, depending on your location. These topics allow users

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to interact, learn, and have an opinion on global topics and newsbreaks, with trending

topics varying from breaking news, to false celebrity deaths (ex: #RIPBeyoncé). If users

feel passionately about a topic the speed it can become “trending” is shockingly fast and

widespread.

Twitter has also been a user of open source software from the beginning built

almost entirely on JavaScript, which allows users to alter and control the program.

Twitter isn’t all that simple thought, each Tweet sent out carries a lot of data with it,

technical and not so technical. Data from a single Tweet can not only tell you who sent it,

where it was sent from, and what time it was sent at but also the sense of social influence

that person has, the number of people they reach, and how big of a voice they have.

Twitter seems like a very simple idea, based around human desire to communicate and

express ideas to a large crowd and some go as far to say that Twitter is “more of a

discovery than an invention” (Ford, 2013).

Problem Solution

Creating a successful name for yourself, or your company, online is an easy, but

time consuming task. Twitter can be thought of as one of, if not the, largest real-time

conversation ever created and it is beneficial to get yourself involved in it.

With Twitters adoption of Vine, the video sharing app, companies can spend very

little time filming and uploading videos for a very low cost to get their messages out to

consumers, quick and easy. A six-second video sent out in a tweet has now replaced, and

become more effective, than a thirty-second television ad played during prime watching

hours (Walter, 2013).

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Amongst the top 10 companies currently on Twitter, JetBlue Airlines ranks about

fourth, using Twitter to communicate with customers, using the site to help prevent

another PR nightmare again (Elowitz, 2010). Keeping in contact with customers’

suggestions, comments, concerns, and questions create a brand loyalty like none other.

JetBlue was able to go from being a company that suffered through a major crisis causing

thousands of customers to have negative experiences; to one of the top companies using

social networks to their advantage proving any company can create an online persona

greater than any PR disaster (Bailey, 2007).

Product Standard Tools and Features

Twitter is a very user-friendly social media site in comparison to others in the

market. Once you create an account, you are shown an empty timeline, which will fill up

with a collection of tweets once you follow other Twitter users. Every time you tweet,

you are adding to your personal timeline, and your tweet is being shown to users that

follow you, on their timelines. You are able to follow, and be followed, by users of

interest. Clicking on someone’s “follow” button now allows their tweets to show up in

chronological order in your timeline, sometimes called a news feed (Grandstaff, 2009).

Retweets and favourite’s are another useful feature offered. Retweeting someone

else’s tweet lets you send their tweet to all of your followers. If you think something is

interesting enough, funny enough, or just cool enough to be shown to more people, you

can simply click “retweet” and it will be shared with all of your followers. Favourites are

very similar, but instead of being shared on your personal timeline, they are put into a

separate timeline on your page, featuring all of your “favourites.”

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Most commonly known, the hashtag. As mentioned earlier, hashtags are used to

categorize your tweets with all other tweets discussing the same topic, adorned with the

same hashtag. All of these features are very useful and very easy to use for first time

users, as well as longtime “Tweeters.”

Risks and Weaknesses

Twitter users have been known to spam their followers with unknown virus’ they

have acquired throughout their searches, favourites, and retweets while logged into their

account. However, Twitter is known for fixing accounts as soon as possible, after it has

been reported. Del Harvey was hired as Twitters 25th employee, given the title of “vice

president of trust and safety” her main job is to filter through tweets dealing with spam,

harassment, threats and more. Though Twitter is known for allowing users free

expression, some things need to be monitored and they have realized this from day one

(Hill, 2014).

Keeping the Twitter trolls and spammers out of timelines is one of the only

downsides of the networking site, at the moment. Constantly working to protect all

accounts from these viruses’ is something they are persistently trying to improve.

Protecting your accounts email and password information is something that all users, of

any social networking site, should always be monitoring.

Security Considerations

Since Twitter is designed to be an open space to freely generate ideas, share

thoughts, and comment on others, security may become a serious issue. No matter how

safe you think you are being online, hackers and spammers have been able to gain

personal information from major companies, as well as personal accounts. Since Twitter

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is such an open and free space “it needs to ensure its platform doesn’t turn into a toxic-

speech zone that scares off users and advertisers … your one-in-a-million chance of

something going horrible wrong happens 500 times a day (due to daily volume of a half-

billion tweets)” (Hill, 2014). Security and keeping yourself private is essentially lies in

your own hands, Twitter can only give you the direction and guidelines to follow.

As mentioned above, Twitter is very good at monitoring and getting rid of

spammers or accounts with virus’ that may attack your personal information or

jeopardize your account.

Ethical Consideration

Ethical considerations on Twitter are very similar to those related to those of the

Internet as a whole. How you use your Twitter account and conduct yourself on the

Internet is entirely up to you, and you must act in a way you feel is responsible, ethical,

and legal. Though, ethics on the Internet may seem like a grey area, most users are able to

determine what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour on and off social networking sites. Of

course, there will be those who are not conducting themselves as well as other, but

ignoring or blocking those accounts is really the only way around it. Twitter is constantly

working on “verifying” accounts for users that are credible sources and not created with

the intent to impersonate another human, or company. The Twitter policy explains that

they cannot verify every account, but users can avoid being viewed as fraud by linking

other websites to your Twitter account, etc., (About Verified Accounts, 2012).

Transparency is another way to increase ethical communication on the Internet.

Organizations must be open to their customers, allowing them to trust and therefore open

up about issues and concerns they have with your products or services. “As individual

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communicators, or tweeters, increase transparency by disclose all information necessary,

they will be contributing to an overall ethical increase in social communication—you

make the choice when you tweet” (Dwyer, 2013). Again, everything you or your

company puts on the Internet is up to you, the relationship you build with your customers

and contacts (or followers) are directly correlated to how you interact with them.

Opportunities

Twitter has recently acquired an ad-tech firm, TapCommerce Inc., which

specializes in targeting consumers after they have downloaded an app and coaxing them

to keep coming back (Koh, 2013). Twitter has recently announced they will begin to

include mobile-app ads to appear in users feeds that would include links to download

apps directly from the Apple store. These ads may prove to be very profitable for Twitter

if they follow any pattern typical of social networking sites, such as Facebook’s very

successful mobile-ad business.

As mentioned earlier, Twitter also added a video-sharing app, Vine, to their list of

success in January 2013. Another app downloaded from the Apple Store, Vine lets you

shoot and share short six second videos, intended to help inspire creativity. Known as a

perfect short video to compliment your 140-character micro-blog. Brands are able to

reach customers they wouldn’t have before, and create and put out more content than

ever before.

Twitter gives companies an audience like no other. Content is shared, added too,

created, and more at the click of a button, letting consumers be a part of the whole

process. Having your main customers at your fingertips, literally, creates a bond and

brand loyalty that companies haven’t been able to experience prior to the social

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networking era. The opportunities Twitter offers for personal and business accounts are

endless, reaching all corners of the globe, and it is hard to create a negative impact from

the abundance of positivity.

Figure 1.1: This photo shows how effective social media users for business feel each social media site can be, when used properly.

(Redsicker, 2014)

Future Features and Enhancements

Twitter unveiled last week that they would be a main source or all things FIFA

World Cup 2014, allowing users to show and share their support for their favourite team,

showing up to date timelines of games along users main timelines, and promoting Tweets

during and after games of who would be advancing in the tournament. “For all social

media devotees, there will be a thousand new shortcuts dedicated to soccer. To enjoy the

FIFA World Cup event keeping up with games, stats, player’s information and schedules

in real time. Right at the touch of a button or using hash tags related to the matches.”

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Users even have the ability to view the match live from their Twitter feed, taking the

experience to another level (Carvallo, 2014). Twitter has never altered the appearance of

their timelines and layout for any event other than this, really promoting conversations

and unity between fans.

Twitters latest app update on iPhones has been a crowd favourite, with users

noticing (and loving) something as small as the “Batman-style effect” logo when opening

the app (Truong, 2014). They have also recently launched Bing translation and embedded

tweet feature to the iOS app. Allowing users to quickly and easily translate Tweets in a

foreign language with a “translate” button under the native language. Since Twitter is

popular around the globe, this will be a helpful feature for everyone. The embedded tweet

feature allows users to open the detailed view of tweets on their iPhone app to see the

embedded tweet, making “retweeting” even easier for all users (Passary, 2014).

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References

About Twitter, Inc. | About. (n.d.). Twitter About. Retrieved June 29, 2014, from https://about.twitter.com/company

FAQs about verified accounts. (2012, January 1). Twitter Help Center. Retrieved July 1, 2014, from https://support.twitter.com/articles/119135-faqs-about-verified-accounts

Bailey, J. (2007, February 18). CHIEF 'MORTIFIED' BY JETBLUE CRISIS. The New York Times. Retrieved July 1, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/business/19jetblue.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Carlson, N. (2011, April 13). The Real History Of Twitter. Business Insider. Retrieved June 29, 2014, from http://www.businessinsider.com/how-twitter-was-founded-2011-4

Carvallo, M. (2014, June 15). FIFA World Cup Makes Social Media Bloom. Guardian Liberty Voice. Retrieved July 3, 2014, from http://guardianlv.com/2014/06/fifa-world-cup-makes-social-media-bloom-2/

Doctor, V. (2013, May 30). Hashtag History: When and What Started It?. Hashtagsorg. Retrieved July 1, 2014, from http://www.hashtags.org/featured/hashtag-history-when-and-what-started-it/

Elowitz, B. (2010, April 12). The Top 10 Companies on Twitter. CNBC.com. Retrieved July 1, 2014, from http://www.cnbc.com/id/36421561/page/8

Ford, P. (2013, November 7). The Hidden Technology That Makes Twitter Huge. Bloomberg Business Week. Retrieved July 2, 2014, from http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-07/the-hidden-technology-that-makes-twitter-huge#p3

Grandstaff, P. (2009, December 10). Twitter Tutorial: 7 Important Features Explained. . Retrieved July 1, 2014, from http://www.petergrandstaff.com/marketing/twitter-tutorial-2

Hill, K. (2014, July 2). Meet Del Harvey, Twitter's Troll Patrol. Forbes. Retrieved July 2, 2014, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/07/02/meet-del-harvey-twitters-troll-patrol/

Kern, E. (2013, April 5). Twitter co-founders clarify Obvious Corp. structure, say Medium now operates independently. Gigaom. Retrieved June 29, 2014, from http://gigaom.com/2013/04/05/twitter-co-founders-clarify-obvious-corp-structure-say-medium-now-operates-independently/

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Koh, Y. (2014, June 30). Twitter Acquires TapCommerce as it Rolls Out Mobile-App Install Ads. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 2, 2014, from http://online.wsj.com/articles/twitter-acquires-tapcommerce-as-it-rolls-out-mobile-app-install-ads-1404165843

Passary, S. (2014, June 18). Twitter tweaks iOS app with Bing translate, embedded tweet feature. Tech Times RSS. Retrieved July 2, 2014, from http://www.techtimes.com/articles/8577/20140618/twitter-tweaks-ios-app-with-bing-translate-embedded-tweet-feature.htm

Redsicker, P. (2014, April 1). New Research, Comparing Social Network Trends for 2014. Social Media Examiner RSS. Retrieved July 2, 2014, from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/new-research-shows-social-networks-ideal-marketers/

Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites | July 2014. (2014, July 1). Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites | July 2014. Retrieved June 30, 2014, from http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites

Truong, A. (2014, June 1). What Twitter Users Love About The New iOS Update. Fast Company. Retrieved July 2, 2014, from http://www.fastcompany.com/3031731/most-innovative-companies/what-twitter-users-love-about-the-new-ios-update

Walter, E. (2013, November 1). 6 Of The Best, Boldest Uses Of Vine In Marketing. Fast Company. Retrieved July 1, 2014, from http://www.fastcompany.com/3019652/dialed/6-of-the-most-creative-clever-uses-of-vine-in-marketing

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Deep Dive - Twitter