In the last two lectures we have discussed psychology in social networks. And in this blog I will mainly focus on the psychology aspects of Twitter.
Twitter is an online social networking service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets". It was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with over 500 million active users as of 2012, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. Since its launch, Twitter has become one of the top 10 most visited websites on the Internet.
The Twitter fail whale error message as there are so many users
So why so many people like Twitter?
The question “What are you doing?” probably is the most frequently asked question among friends and families. By asking this question, one may feel envolved into somebody’s life. While, most people’s personal life is hidden in his own box and few people could know. Although we may connect ourselves with each other by methods like email, mobile phones and blogs, we do not send an email to everyone telling them that I am having a cup of coffee in Starbucks or I am watching an football match of the Manchester United. So what about people who wants to know that?
Then the Twitter comes. It is something like the micro-blogs, you can only write 140 characters in twitter. The Twitter has connected people together. The page of Twitter is personalized and you can see the updates of tweets of your friends. It is easy for you to find what your friends are doing at present and it is also quite easy to find other information you never know. For example, one of your workmates tweets that he is reading《Harry Potter》, and you know he is also a Harry Potter fun like you. Without the use of twitter such things would be harder to achieve. People could get access to Twitter via website and the mobile apps and that could be another reason for making twitter popular.
Twitter has changed the way of sending an instant message to one person. With twitter, people can talk to the world and then the world talks back. With twitter, we can get the feeling of someone always be there. We may feel missing something when we are off-line and could not receive the twitter updates of others.
Why people seems be additive to this. Maybe updating the twitter has some relationship with the slot machine. If you could not except what the twitter comes next, you will be back for getting more. In front of the slot machine, we are not sure whether we are going to get a reward and then we will continue slotting the handle.
Person value is the core aspect in both people’s real life and virtual world. In twitter, you will discover your personal value be recognized. The RT (retweet) function, when your twitter is retweeted by someone and followed by others, what you tweeting is of value. Everyone can be his own king in his twitter world with his followers.
In conclusion, the Twitter is a social networking website that get people connected and their value recognized. With the simple function (only 140 characters at most) and easy access by both PCs and mobile phones, twitter is loved by many people.
