Posted
on July 15, 2016
When
I look for things to write about here, I usually see long, depressing
lists of wars, battles, coups, massacres, and other sorts of violence
that happened on the date I'm writing about. Scattered among all that
depressing stuff, here and there, are inventions.
I
tend to focus on the positive, so: inventions! Innovations!
Creativity!
On
this date in 2006, Twitter was introduced to the public for the first
time.
When
Twitter was being created as a way for people to send and read short
messages to one another, it wasn't clear how people were going to use
it. Most called it a social network, like Facebook, because people
could follow friends and family, and vice versa; people could also
follow stars (probably NOT vice versa!). But actually it quickly
evolved to be more of an information network.
At
a 2007 conference, Twitter people placed 60-inch screens in the
conference hallways and streamed Twitter messages. Because of this,
speakers and panelists mentioned Twitter, and conference-goers
realized that they could keep tabs on each other via tweets. The
number of tweets per day tripled during the event, and a LOT of
enthusiasts were created.
Since
then, of course, the number of Twitter users and tweets has increased
hugely – and quickly. Twitter is now used by about 320 million
people, these days, resulting in these sorts of numbers:
On
average, around 6,000 tweets per second
About
350,000 tweets per minute
About
500,000,000 tweets per day
About
200,000,000,000 tweets per year
Wow!
 |
| Twitter: one more reason to be on your phone rather than talking, watching, listening...? |
People
use Twitter especially during big-time events. Disasters, extreme
weather, elections, exciting or important soccer or basketball
games...keep up with all of that with Twitter!
Here
are some things to learn about Twitter – just explore around
Twitter, Google the terms, ask a friend, or even tweet a question:
- How can you find out what is trending on Twitter?
- How can you use hashtags to connect with the people you want to connect with?
- What celebrities are fun to follow?
- How many tweets a day are cool – and not bothersome?
- What kind of information can you find on Twitter?
- How can you tweet stuff that others want to retweet?
- Should you reply to specific people using @?
Also
on this date:
Plan ahead:
Check
out my Pinterest boards for:
And
here are my Pinterest boards for:
