Blog About Twitter

Twitter allows for people to "tweet" which is simple voicing their opinion to the general public, a specific group of interested users via "hashtags", and people that follow them. BlackBoard discussions are private and shared only with people who are enrolled in the course. Twitter on the other hand is public in that anyone following you can see your activity. The similarities that the two is that you're voicing or talking to only the people that know you exist. For example, when you post on BlackBoard your opinion is only seen by those that are also on Blackboard and for Twitter it is by the people that you allow to follow you (only if your profile is private). So in a way both platforms allow you to start discussions with people that you want to get answers from. When comparing Twitter to an in-class discussion we think about people participating. In a class discussion people are usually taking turns voicing their opinions and their thoughts about a subject. These discussions are also usually taking place within a confined space like a classroom or a lecture hall. Twitter does the same thing, but is a lot more flexible in that it allows for people to contribute to a discussion via Tweets. There isn't anything such as "calling out" or "raising your hand" in a Twitter discussion. When people tweet(voice) their opinions, its instantly seen(heard) by the people they're directed to on someone of a real time news feed. Now the discussions on Twitter are happening instantaneously without waiting for someone to finish talking and they can instantly voice an opinion on someone else's opinion. Twitter is in the internet space so there is no confined space for discussion and anyone who wishes to chime in, can do so. By using hashtags Twitter discussions can be specified in that only people who are explicitly looking for a specific hashtag or subject will see it. One unique feature that I think Twitter has that makes having a conversation or discussion so engaging is the limit of characters you may use on a response or tweet. I think short answers allow people to answer tweets quickly as well as read through them quickly. We don't want to hear a kid in the classroom talk about something for an entire two hours, so I'm sure we don't want to read a tweet that is three pages long. We have old media for that.