Paper #1 Historical & Cultural Overview of Twitter (Revised)

Jose Mejia

English 1302

Ms. Reyes

2-7-2017

Twitter has served as probably, in my opinion over the last three years, as one of the most influential social Medias in the globe. Although it competes daily with Facebook and other related medias, its consistency in evolving and making the app much better than when it began, makes this significant. Self-writing and posting about ourselves is a daily concept now. We tell a narrative of our daily experiences and how they make us feel. Is 140 characters keeping us back? Or is that the point Twitter is trying to do, by keeping us from refraining all the details and sticking to the point?

According to "Mobile: A Brief History of Twitter", Twitter was developed in late March of 2006. It was a ten-person group of individuals in San Francisco who were led by, Evan Williams. Interestingly enough, Williams was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who also co-founded Blogger in the 1990's. People began using twitter in the same year it was developed, but didn't become notorious to the entire nation until 2007 when it was exposed at an Austin-based SXSW festival. Twitter only allowed and still to this day allows users to say what they want to say in 140 characters or less. Although at first this concept seemed to be a failure, it transcended social networking immensely.

How does Twitter work? You basically register for your own profile. After doing that first step, you post updates on your site, add your instant messaging and then conclude with any mobile phone details. Key features that Twitter has and that has added over the years is you can update your Twitter in almost any device. You can follow family, friends and even famous icons. Some of these examples for icons include, celebrities, politicians, athletes, and etc.. News services are also to be provided to users to stay alert on any immediate breaking news information around the globe. Most people use Twitter as a self-writing platform to further get their own story or narrative out. Although it only allows a certain amount of characters, simple one, two, or even three word posts can perceive as a lot. Our culture has evolved and we've become more vocal in social media. Regardless of anything, nobody can tell us how to express ourselves, a huge part of this new generation of social culture is Twitter.

Twitter has led to lots of positives through more than a decade. However, many negative posts and comments between certain individuals have made Twitter a place in which hostilities seem to grow at a large part. The recent President Elect and now our 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, falls under this hostile group of people who turn to Twitter to get their narrative or story heard. Not all people seem to realize that this is an app opened to pretty much the entire public. Mr. Trump had said a variety of outrageous things throughout his campaign. The most notable comments were actually tweets that he posted on his Twitter profile. Dozens of people around the Nation and around the globe went back to the Presidents tweets from years past. Trump was exposed to millions of Americans on comments of which he had made years ago regarding numerous political situations. The fact that Twitter was the main base for all this activity just shows the evolution and the true impact its social media standard has brought upon the world.

200 million followers and ten years later, Twitter has grown exponentially without a doubt left behind. According to Brian Jenkins from, "A brief history of twitter", the character limitation didn't just serve as the Medias weakness at first, but also became its biggest strength. Jenkins mentions, "The very brief nature of messages on Twitter forced users to become more concise, deft and clever in their communication style." The aspect of this, including the ability of Twitter to let huge personified people communicate directly with users, led to the growth of this. Eventually, Twitter has enabled the people who use it, to become better communicators in the generation we abide with today.

          This research showed me just how self-writing has transcended into our generation. Anderson mentions in his writings on page 213, “Narrative is a discursive schema located within local individual and broader contexts and within culturally driven rules and conventions.” Although this schema has been brought down by past generations, the way we connect now with the topic of “self-writing” has changed. By change, I mean the way we get our voices heard, especially on Twitter has influenced the perception of narrative. Recent readings on “Writing Arguments, A Rhetoric with Readings, Chapter 2,” Ramage, Bean, and Johnsons mention a strategy or concept known as the Believing and Doubting game. We as readers put ourselves in both the actual credibility of whatever that argument may be and oppose as well, doubt. Twitter has been a place where a major part of the world mention their opinions on controversial outbreaks. This all just goes to show how much influence Twitter has had on how narratives will be seen from here until the next development. 







New Media Age, "MOBILE: A BRIEF HISTORY OF TWITTER" http://www.centaur.co.uk/, May 17, 2007


Brian Jenkins, "A brief history of twitter", http://acter.metapress.com/home/main.mpx, April 2014