Twitter

With every new communication technology invented, a more detailed way for people to chronicle their lives minute-by-minute seems to emerge. Instant messaging brought away messages, cell phones introduced text messages and, now, Twitter has invented the ‘tweet.’
Twitter users send tweets, small messages of 140 characters or fewer, to everyone in their community, consisting of co-workers, friends and family members. In an instant, users can update their ‘followers’ about their current status. The mini blogs can also be found by anyone through a search engine.
Ryan Dailey, a College of Communication sophomore, said she finds this aspect of Twitter unattractive due to its lack of privacy.
‘The site advertises that you can update friends and family constantly while on Twitter, which is nice, but I really don’t want to be connected to everyone at all times,’ she said. ‘Plus, your friends and family are not the only people who see what you’re up to.’
Steve Quigley, a Boston University public relations professor and recent Twitter user, said the service is beneficial to students currently because of the social aspect, as well as in their future professional lives.
Managers who have a hard time adapting to the new technologies are looking to hire young employees with higher technology skills to help them figure out new media and waves of technology, Quigley said.
‘It’s a weird dynamic because they look to you to figure things out,’ he said. ‘They love to hire someone that can help them, but in a sense resent the fact that they themselves couldn’t do it.’
At a recent new media conference that Quigley attended, he saw how young professionals advocated and put Twitter to good use. He describes how, at the conference, the moderator of the panel had panelists tweet the questions to him. This was effective because he was skipping through the questions and choosing to answer the better ones.
Quigley used a hypothetical example to explain how Twitter could be used by Jet Blue employees. They may have their settings established so that they receive a ‘tweet’ whenever anyone posts something about the airline.
‘For instance, if there are 30 angry tweets at Logan Airport about a problem with Jet Blue, as an employee, I’ve learned a lot of useful information,’ he said. ‘I can now send this message to a regional office to fix the issue.’