After reading Steven Johnson’s article “How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live,” I sat down and thought about my entire history of social networking. I indeed had one of those AIM chat profiles in my younger days. Following that, I moved a bit higher up in the world and made a Myspace profile. In high school, I was invited to Facebook . Finally, in my freshman year of college I was swept up in the wave of peer pressure and made a Twitter account.

Upon further review of this history, I came to realize that all of those networks were trying to minimize the mistakes and improve the strong points of the previous one. The Myspace blog evolved into the Facebook status update which evolved into the tweet. All of these networks have one goal: to allow the members to express themselves in the best way possible. Currently, Twitter is at the head of the pack when it comes to efficient expression. It is almost a streamlined version of Facebook, cutting out all of the useless parts and just allowing the users to express (or promote) themselves in the quickest way possible.

As stated by Johnson, the workings of twitter are much more complex than they appear. With the consistent use of hashtags and mentions, it builds up a harmonious thread of conversation on various topics that Facebook can’t compete with. Twitter is addition by subtraction, it lets the important information categorize itself through hashtags rather than requiring the users to join some kind of group to make sure their opinions are heard. In a year or so, it would not be crazy to see Facebook go extinct as Myspace has.

However, there is no outrunning evolution for Twitter. Soon, another social network will rise up and improves upon Twitter’s mistakes. Right now, it looks like Tumblr is leading the way for the next generation of social networks. For me, however, the social networks end here. At 21, I feel like I am far too old to be in on everybody’s gossip.