Bird of Mouth

Twitter

Twitter is without any doubt is the best way to share and discover what is happening right now. Basically twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service where users send and read messages known as tweets which posts up to 140 characters shown on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Nowadays, twitter has a large reach. In case you are still not yet familiar with twitter‘s trend you can get introduced by this video here. In addition to the above, twitter is now much more than answering the “what are you doing?” question.

How is it different than facebook? facebook is mainly for people looking to reconnect with old friends and family members or find new friends online where twitter on the other hand is all about the conversation/ tête-à-tête and best thing is that there is always someone there to who will see your message. Twitter is for stuff within 140 characters; where facebook on the other hand is for stuff within 141 characters and longer. I use twitter a lot – twittermaniac. I follow different people and people follow me. Since I joined twitter I have “tweeted” over 2000 times, far more tweets than blog posts I have written. I twitter questions, what I am doing, remarks, information about the world around me and my life, I still use facebook though but not as much as I use twitter. To me facebook is keeping in touch with my “Real Life” friends, it’s about people I know and used to know. Twitter though is my public social network and about people who I would like to know better.

Moving to twitter in UAE. There was a time when twitter was blocked in UAE for reasons I still can’t understand. But then it was unblocked which resulted in mass adoption of twitter by many of the nation. Twitter has brought UAE into a more global community, the UAE’s twitter community numbers are just over 1000 users at present, but is extremely fast growing, with a percentage which is quite active. The results of a recent survey of 23 twitter users, 60% of who are based in Dubai /UAE. Proudly, the UAE runs the twitter game in the Middle East and Arab world, thus UAE leads region in twitter growth yay! With more and more users getting on board every day, twitter is becoming a source for instant information and news about what’s going on in the country, and with several events being organized around. Before twitter, TV, newspapers, radio stations, ect. Were the source of information but now you will be surprised how twitter topped them all and how people has been using twitter to share, answer, help and entertain. Twitter increased the attentiveness and communication between students, co-workers, teachers, organizations, companies and above all we are proud that His Highness Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid AlMaktoum is one of the users. Furthermore, we have a “UAE Tweets” website now which according to their description is a twitter lens on the UAE, to provide a quick view of the UAE community pulse, and what’s on their minds at any given moment. It currently displays that it is following 391 UAE Twitter users and indexing their tweets. In addition to users’ tweets, “UAE Tweets” also provides sections with the latest links being shared by users, as well as the most popular of those links. A close example on how UAE Twitters are so determined, firm, dedicated, and proud was when they made DUBAI METRO their project to make this historic, important and remarkable occasion in the trending topics. 09.09.09 Dubai’s own twitter globe exploded in joy upon the achievements. This only shows how cooperative, patriotic, nationalistic, devoted, knowledgeable, keeping pace with latest technology and loyal UAE Twitters are. Twitter made us closer to each other!

Wrapping it all up, twitter and facebook are two different communities each with its own purpose. A perfect example of both as said by @stevethornton. Facebook is like when you mingle and chat at a wedding or other social gathering where lots of people know each other. On the other hand twitter is when you go to a large party or social event where you don’t know most of the people attending; which makes you use a very different style of communication. Twitter is like getting the stand or getting on stage to say your say to become known and listened to and not everyone feels comfortable and relaxed when standing in the spotlight. As a matter of fact I realized that almost all of us, when first approaching twitter, we are likely to use it to post worthless updates like “Going for lunch”, believing that it’s another tool to be in touch with friends, when in fact, it is more like stepping on to a stage, where you are communicating with an audience and quickly find that you need to find a voice and say something useful and out of the ordinary or you will quickly lose the attention of your audience.

So, isn’t it time to join twitter yet?