Twitter Timeline

I feel that, if the reader has thus far followed my admittedly rambling, stumbling (strumbling? strambling?) conceptualization of how the internet and personal computers combine to create a record of history more detailed and personal than at any point in the past, and the reader is also familiar with Twitter, everything I’m about to say on the subject should be pretty self-evident. I’ve touched on Twitter a bit previously, so I don’t think it needs any detailed analysis. But in case you’re unfamiliar (arguably a mercy for you), I’ll take you through it anyway, much as I just did with Facebook.

For perhaps the last time, Wikipedia:
“Twitter is a website which offers a social networking and microblogging service, enabling its users to send and read other users' messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user's profile page. Tweets are publicly visible by default, however senders can restrict message delivery to their friends list. Users may subscribe to other users' tweets—this is known as following and subscribers are known as followers. All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, compatible external applications (such as for smartphones), or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries. While the service is free, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees. Since its creation in 2006, Twitter has gained popularity worldwide and currently has more than 175 million users. Quantcast estimates Twitter has 54 million monthly unique U.S. visitors.”

Twitter is smaller than Facebook, it’s true, but – even within its 140-character limit – it can allow for even more freedom of expression and personal definition. If you have a thought that’s longer than 140 characters, you have the option to post more than one tweet at a time, or to use an external Twitter client. Services such as TwitLonger allow Twitter users to post as many characters as they want; when they hit the enter key, TwitLonger posts the first several characters to the user’s account, with a link to the rest of the text.

It is also exceedingly easy to use Twitter to link other users to your blog or photos. My Twitter account is linked to my DeviantArt, my Tumblr, even the blog where I’ve been posting updates about this essay. Many people link Facebook and Twitter, so that their tweets show up as status updates on Facebook. (I personally opt against this because my mom is my friend on Facebook but has, happily, forgotten her Twitter password.)

When California voters upheld Proposition 8, Twitter exploded. It seemed like everyone I followed had something to say on the subject. People were tweeting and retweeting. In real time, I watched events unfold. I got links to opinions, not just those of my followers but those of bloggers and prominent members of the LGBT community literally as soon as they were available online. Most interestingly to me, I was shown links to videos, both recorded and uploaded – and streaming, live. Sitting in my parents’ living room in Manchester, Iowa, I could use my personal computer to watch as clergy, peacefully protesting the decision, did nothing to resist as their wrists were zip-tied together, as they and their compatriots were escorted into police cars and driven away. My thoughts on Prop 8 could constitute an entirely different essay, but the point here is that Twitter allowed me to see and share in a historic event, as it occurred in real time, that took place thousands of miles from where I physically was.

I currently have no way of knowing statistics for the average Twitter user, but studies are being done all the time with Twitter user data (especially since it’s largely public). Sites like tweetstats.com can measure various stats for specific users. Out of curiosity, I checked my own user stats, which I could share with my Twitter followers with a simple click of the mouse:

TweetStats for sebhar (Tweet This!)
Last updated 15 Nov 2010 at 17:49
Your Tweet Timeline - 33.4 tweets per day (tpd) / 728 tweets per month (tpm)

(If you’re curious, more detailed graphs with even more specific stats about my Twitter use can be found, as my Twitter followers were informed, here: http://tweetstats.com/graphs/sebhar)

I’m probably a more active Twitter user than most, but even taking that fact into consideration, imagine the sheer volume of information Twitter generates and later stores, personal histories – not just verbal, but in the form of links to preferred websites, retweets from favored users, photos and videos generated by the user themselves or shared from other users – formulated in small pieces over long periods of time.

What’s more, as I’ve mentioned before, the Library of Congress archives tweets. The links may no longer work, but fifty years from now – the same distance of time between myself and my grandfather – curious youth will know exactly what happened, in what order, at what time, in what we consider the present.