What’s so great about Twitter?

Twitter in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

By Matthew Gillis

Since I began “tweeting” in May 2011, I’ve grown to like Twitter (despite much uncertainty). My first hesitation stemmed from the content that many people post on the site. I’m not a fan of hearing about how much laundry you have on Facebook, so why would I want to see it on Twitter?

But I think that’s what makes Twitter so intriguing. In “Future of Social Media: Is a Tweet the New Size of a Thought,” Julian Dibbell describes Twitter’s format as a type of microblogging, in which people publish steady streams of one-line updates.

What makes a successful blog is one that incorporates aspects of one’s daily thoughts, struggles, and triumphs, and I see that style taken with Twitter. Twitter users approach the site as a diary, publishing honest and vulnerable content that doesn’t aim to seek any rewards, which contrasts much of users’ goals on Facebook, where one updates his or her status in hopes of accumulating a high number of “likes.” I find Twitter’s sincerity to be refreshing.

Because Twitter lacks a feature like Facebook’s “like” button, users aren’t reassured that followers are reading their content. I find myself publishing random information about my day that I don’t even bother telling my closest friends, not knowing who (if anyone) is reading it.

Twitter favors anonymity, which I believe also encourages the truthfulness (however bleak or brutal) of users’ updates. Dibbell quotes Farhad Manjoo, who sees an unknown risk to Twitter: “I think there’s a question whether Twitter is going to be the thing everybody does…” I think that being able to use a fake username or profile image downplays Twitter’s competitive advantage in the world of social networking and cautions many from using the site.

However, I believe Twitter’s advantage lies in this idea of users’ content being “random, fleeting observations,” as Dibbell describes it. Users have the ability to publish what they feel at the exact moment they feel it; Twitter is a real time diary. In an age of shared thinking, Twitter capitalizes on no longer being alone in our own thoughts and allows people to form strong connections with those they “follow.”

Twitter’s success lies on one basic and human feeling: there’s comfort in knowing that you’re not alone.

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Follow me on Twitter: @MatthewTGillis

Question what you read

Photo By Matthew Gillis/Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Original.

Photo By Matthew Gillis/Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Edited.

By Matthew Gillis

Wikipedia has capitalized on today’s societal idea of shared thinking. What could be more valuable than an encyclopedia that is created and maintained by the one’s experiencing and learning the things they’re writing about?

After signing up for a Wikipedia account, I began looking for photography-related articles that I could knowledgeably contribute to. However, the surprising part of the Wikipedia experience is that you don’t have to know about the articles you want to edit. As Stacy Schiff explains in her article “Know It All,” Wikipedia doesn’t favor the university professor over the high school cheerleader. Like many aspects of the web, anyone can contribute.

However, I found many drawbacks to this collective contribution. As I was reading the photography page, I discovered countless grammatical errors, several biased entries, and numerous inaccuracies. Desiring to contribute to Wikipedia as a member of our shared-thinking culture, I corrected several of the grammatical errors, added information about amateur photography, and removed biased facts about commercial photography.

Before learning more about the process of a wiki site like Wikipedia, I had taken what I read on the site as truthful information, despite many of my teachers’ warnings. I find that to be true with many written and published information. You take what you see at face value, and you believe what you read. I mean, honestly, how many of you have ever questioned the veracity of a newspaper article? But what makes something in writing, whether online or in print, seem worthy of our trust?

Photo By Matthew Gillis/Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Original.

Photo By Matthew Gillis/Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Edited.

I never believed that the edited information I provided was false, which made me surprised to find several of my contributions removed just hours later. While I see the practicality of having an “oversight” function, as Schiff describes, to eliminate vandals and inaccurate information, I was offended to see my work dismissed. Similarly, I am insulted when others edit my photographs to their liking. We gain a certain attachment to the works we create, whether in writing or through photography, and we tend to defend them as if they are the best, most truthful development.

I believe this is why we trust what we read. Once an idea is put into writing or captured on camera, we become attached to the validity of it, because we place high value on the time we took to create it. I think we overextend the idea of valuing effort to other people’s work as well.

Schiff suggests Wikipedia’s “breadth, efficiency, and accessibility” to be the site’s defining features over traditional encyclopedias. However, the reader’s false sense of trust with Wikipedia’s content (created by anyone, including Joe Shmoe) may be creating a culture of misinformed people.