Teens take over the Twitter-verse

By: Shayla Jones

The 140-character phenomenon that is Twitter has been around since 2006 and has been growing by year, now with over 106 million users. 

It is one of the easiest social networks to use, with the click of a button people can “tweet” anything they want the world to see. It is a great way to connect with friends and speak your mind.

“I like having Twitter to see what certain people are thinking,” senior Peyton Wells said. “But I don’t like that you can’t only see the tweets you’re interested in.”

Everyone has been through trying to find the perfect username so they could instant message with their friends. Not to mention spending hours trying to find the perfect layout while decorating Myspace pages. Updating and checking Facebook feeds to see what is happening with all their friends has replaced AIM and MySpace. Now Twitter has taken over Facebookers all over the world.

People can tweet from their phone or their iPod and send instantly. It is almost like Facebook, but instead of seeing other objects on the page, people only see status updates. You might just enjoy following your friends, you can also easily check up on the biggest stars to see the latest celebrity gossip.

“My favorite tweets to read are from my friends and Lady Gaga,” Wells said.

According to sophomore Brett Walts, looking at the sports topics if there’s a big game on is his favorite Twitter activity.

It is always amusing to look at your sidebar and see the “trending topics” on the website. The Twitter trending topics, when clicked on, will list the tweets of everyone who is updating about these subjects.

Trending topics might be celebrity fans tweeting them good luck for an award show, or something funny like the popular, #shestooyoungforyoubro hash tag from Jersey Shore, or something a bit more serious such as CNN breaking news. Either way they are good to check up on in some free time.

Twitter is always making fresh additions to their site. They have updated their layout of the page and also added the gallery feature. The gallery is a media function to show images that have been shared by Twitter users. It’s a good way to show others what you want to share with them.

“It [the photo gallery] is good because a lot of people can post pictures of what they’re doing, but they’re trying to be like Facebook,” said Walts.

Social networks will come and go. Twitter may not last for a long time. In the future there may be something even better. Until then we can all tweet like there is no tomorrow.