Stagg Line <![CDATA[Stagg Line]]> http://my.hsj.org/Portals/2/logos/__TFMF_npggb3555sn2ap55zr1jtuva_bd9679b6-0b0a-4b5a-8fe9-05b85d93bc75_0___Selected.jpg en-us Copyright 2008 - All Rights Reserved. Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:12:26 GMT 15 <![CDATA[TWITTER: A good idea gone horribly wrong]]> By Gared Hassel

ART BY JERA MACHUCA

With all the wars, economic problems and politics in the world, people couldn’t possibly have time to contact people about their everyday lives… Well, think again. People are now finding it possible to stay in contact with their friends and family through Twitter. Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets .  Twitter started as just a computer Web site for people to use, and to put notices about what they’re doing in their day, and it has slowly become a success in the world. Twitter is currently the third most used social network in America (Facebook being the largest, followed second by MySpace.)  As if it wasn’t big enough from being on the Internet, the Twitter staff added a phone application so that, even on the go, you can stay in contact with people you may know, so that you can tell about what you’re doing at that moment. Twitter works 98 percent of the time and is only down 2 percent of the time, when there is down time the “fail whale” is summoned.  The “fail whale” is a whimsical illustration of red birds using nets to hoist a whale from the ocean; it appears when there are too many tweets being sent. At least something can happen to Twitter when there is a serious problem. Though this may sound like an idea to stay close with friends and family it isn’t. For your first experience with Twitter, you make think that it is a great way to stay in touch with people you know.  You could stay sane but you will eventually slip into the insane category; you could send a message like this: “I just remembered how much I like pickles.” Wow... I hope to never be like that, and that is why I don’t tweet with Twitter. Twitter is basically an addiction to “constant self-affirmation.”  Twitter is in twouble .  Though I tried Twitter just to see how fun it could be, I slowly learned what is really going on in the Twitter universe, a.k.a the Twitter-sphere. It is a way of people with better lives than you to share how their lives are more glamorous and exciting, and that yours will never be that way, so Twitter is for bragging rights only. People that have friends on Twitter may think that their friends want to be in their everyday lives but they don’t. You can’t just message every second of the day and expect someone to read about what you’re doing. It is like screaming into darkness and expecting someone to hear you.  People that Twitter are addicts and need help, if Twitter could be changed, then that would be better than how, right now, people are tweeting about their personal lives. Twitter could be used for a better application like: using Twitter as a news type idea where there are on the notice posts of what is going on at moments notice so that you may know of traffic problems or how the weather might turn out then that would help the world. Twitter in my mind sounds like an idea that is still growing and has some “bugs” to fix up. Some say Twitter is an idea that a genius created… I do not. It is another version of MySpace and Facebook, so stay on the Internet and stop tweeting .  So in the case that Twitter will still be around, let’s bring on the “fail whale!”  ]]> Thu, 14 May 2009 16:02:39 GMT