ENGL 303: Multimedia Writing , Spring 2012 » Online http://courses.johnmjones.org/multimedia West Virginia University, Professional Writing & Editing Tue, 03 Nov 2015 14:39:13 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 The Industry of Twitter http://courses.johnmjones.org/multimedia/2012/01/the-industry-of-twitter/ http://courses.johnmjones.org/multimedia/2012/01/the-industry-of-twitter/#comments Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:18:05 +0000 sarawise http://courses.johnmjones.org/multimedia/?p=336 Continue reading ]]> Steven Johnson’s TIME article makes a great case for Twitter and all of its functionality. He touches on the ways that ordinary people use the site, as well as the ways that celebrities, corporations and educators use it.

On the last page of the article, he begins to discuss the innovations that come along with a site such as Twitter:

Since the mid-’80s, a long progression of doomsayers have warned that our declining market share in the patents-and-Ph.D.s business augurs dark times for American innovation…

But what actually happened to American innovation during that period? We came up with America Online, Netscape, Amazon, Google, Blogger, Wikipedia, Craigslist, TiVo, Netflix, eBay, the iPod and iPhone, Xbox, Facebook and Twitter itself. Sure, we didn’t build the Prius or the Wii, but if you measure global innovation in terms of actual lifestyle-changing hit products and not just grad students, the U.S. has been lapping the field for the past 20 years.

What we see today are entire industries being created online. Twitter alone is a hub of smaller industries coming together to form one big industry through tweets.

There are now people who are paid for the sole purpose of maintaining a Twitter feed. Most every corporation has an employee, often a marketing or PR expert, who fills the role of “social media manager” or some other relatively new position.

Even in an economic downturn, the Internet is thriving and creating jobs in a time where unemployment is featured at the top of every news hour.

Only a few years after its creation, here we are learning how to brand ourselves on Twitter and how that branding will take us further in life.

Sure, many – perhaps most – people see Twitter as ‘just another network’, but the fact remains that Twitter is an industry for those who want to broadcast their message to the masses.

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Twitter Is the Now (At Least for Now) http://courses.johnmjones.org/multimedia/2012/01/twitter-is-the-now-at-least-for-now/ http://courses.johnmjones.org/multimedia/2012/01/twitter-is-the-now-at-least-for-now/#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:56:45 +0000 benscott http://courses.johnmjones.org/multimedia/?p=309 Continue reading ]]> I really enjoyed the article “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live.” The most interesting thing the article pointed out is mankind’s resourcefulness to find multiple uses for a single tool. In today’s society a tool seems to be judged on how many different things it can do. In our culture, everyone might not have something like a hammer (a tool that can push nails in or pull nails out) but almost everyone has something like a cell phone (a tool that can take pictures, send texts, make calls, surf the web, etc.). While having a hammer is important to some people, having a phone that is part computer and part camera is much more important to the vast majority. Because Twitter can be used for so many different things, it has become an invaluable tool for many people. As long as Twitter can keep changing and updating with the times it will stay in the now as one of the most popular outlets for social media. Since the internet is a fickle thing, Twitter could potentially be forgotten in a few years. Once there was MySpace, which was forgotten about shortly after Facebook. Twitter hasn’t been able to completely take out Facebook but they could be one addition away from doing so. The article pointed out that the creators of Twitter were offered $500 million from Facebook, am offer that seems to imply that Facebook at least feels threatened. The same could happen to Twitter if a new site comes along and develops a large enough following. As things are now, Twitter is a rising star and it will be interesting to see where they go from here.

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