Twitter is a social media platform that allows users to post short messages called tweets. It was launched in 2006 by Jack Dorsey and now has over 500 million active users who generate over 340 million tweets daily. Tweets are used for conversations, sharing information and reporting news. Journalists are increasingly using Twitter to engage audiences and share news in real-time. While Twitter is still a small source of news for most, a single retweet can expose a message to millions of people based on the network of followers. As Twitter continues to grow, it is changing how breaking news and information spreads online.

1. Sarah Murphy

2. Twitter is an online social networking site that lets users
read/write text based messages of up to 140 characters.
These are known as “tweets”
▪ Launched by Jack Dorsey in July 2006
▪ Today there are over 500 million
active users
▪ Twitter generates over 340 million Creator Jack Dorsey
tweets everyday
▪ Known as the SMS of the Internet
▪ It is one of the Top 10 most visited
sites on the Internet

3. Simple, Time
Its
Efficient &
Conversational

4. ▪ There are 4 main reasons why people tweet:
Conversation, Daily Chatter, Sharing Information or
Reporting the news
▪ It helps social media addicts be informed on
what is going on in the world
▪ It is a quicker way to gets news without
having to wait for the 6 o`clock news or pick
up a newspaper

5. ▪ Up to date facts on breaking news or ▪ May create panic to readers with up
latest stories to date facts if it is not really an
▪ Creates more awareness for people emergency.
who do not read the newspaper or Example:
watch the news on a day to day basis 11:05 a.m. - A package is found at
▪ It helps influence people to help the Canadian Embassy…
when countries are in crisis (e.g. 11:07 a.m. – Just a box of Donuts
Hurricane Katrina, Haiti etc) ▪ Twitter can be known as an opinion
▪ Puts small town Broadcasting Stations social media site – not the facts
on the map if they have a twitter
account
▪ Will also help well known News
Stations to help expand their brand to
other customers / readers
▪ It also helps the News Journalists …

6. ▪ In recent years more Journalists have been tweeting news
to engage audiences as well as further their fan base
▪ It helps Journalists become active in their society and let
the readers know that they reporting all the time (not just
on the 6 o`clock news)
▪ It helps Journalists connect with their viewers as well as
other Journalists to promote information-sharing, new
experiences and knowledge
▪ Twitter also allows viewers/readers to respond to
Journalists personal opinions as well as latest news stories
▪ Many News Broadcasts encourage their Journalists to have
twitter accounts to help their brand as well

8. ▪ News on Twitter is still a small driver for News
▪ Just 9% of Digital News consumers get their news from Twitter

9. An experiment was done in July 2009 called the `Retweet Tree
Analysis` which shows the instances of Retweeting. When a message is
Retweeted just a few times it reaches a huge number of users

10. The ideas behind Stanley Milgram's original "six degrees of
separation" experiment, which suggested that any two people on
earth could be connected by at most six hops from one
acquaintance to the next, have been widely applied to online
social networks; Specifically Twitter
No matter how many followers a user has, with one retweet from a
user it can be seen by 26 people upwards to 29,534,177 people
(Justin Biebers follower count) with one retweet it has given each
user the power to spread information from these news sources with
doing nothing but clicking a mouse.

11. ▪ With the rise of Twitter and other social media sites
(StumbleUpon, Facebook etc) it’s now possible to have a news
site built entirely around sharing
▪ With one Retweet from a Journalist millions of people can see
the Breaking story of that day
▪ It seems that today`s generation is more interested in seeing
information and sharing it with the rest of the world than just
reading it and talking about it later with a co -worker
▪ With the way Twitter going with over 500 Million active users
there is no stopping this phenomenon …
Twitter has broken into this Technical Bubble and there is no
stopping its growth

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Hargitti, E., & Litt, E. (2012) Becoming a Tweep. Information,
Communication & Society15(5), 680-702.
doi:10.1080/1369118X.2012.666256
Lasorsa, D.L., Lewis, S.C., & Holton A.E. (2012). Normalizing
Twitter. Journalizing Studies, 13(1), 19-36.
doi:10.1080é1461670X.2011.571825