It seems like it was just yesterday when all heads turn to blogs as an alternative source for information such as political news, entertainment news and whatnot. But today, all eyes seem to lay on Twitter, a social networking and micro-blogging service. Twitter enables users to send out and receive messages known as 'tweets'. Twitter is also subscription based like YouTube, except that subscribers are known as 'followers' instead.
When exactly did this 'Twitter' storm hits our country, Malaysia? Twitter was believed to brought upon vigorously in Malaysia by opposition icon Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim's Sodomy ll trial. As twitter allows users to have real-time communication, the Malaysian politician, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was actively tweeting as his way of telling the public he is innocent and the government was trying to frame him up (Zahiid, 2010).
Image source: http://mybloghub.my/2010/03/page/5What made Twitter possibly more appealing than blog is probably that all tweets come in 'bite size', with only 140 character limit per tweet, users are made to update short and straightforwardly. Hence, readers or followers will get all updates in just a couple of seconds. Although blog provides more information, nevertheless, Twitter is easier to fit into readers' increasingly busy lives as it allows us to get right to the point (Sieberg, 2009). Moreover, Twitter followers get all live updates from Twitter users they subscribe, whereas blogging does not provide readers this type of feature.
Back to Anwar's case, Anwar currently has 26,352 followers. Just not too long ago, he had 5,108 followers during the peak of the trial. You can simply imagine just how fast is Twitter growing by looking at these numbers. Another reason Twitter could be possibly taking over blog is that the users of smart phones and 3G mobile are rising rapidly. According to Zahiid (2010), from 3 million in 1999, now the numbers have raise to almost 30 million. Apart from that, smart phones such as iPhone and Blackberry and certain 3G mobile phones can also download Twitter as an application in order to gain easy access by just a click!
So, have you gotten your very own Twitter account?
Till next time!
References:
Sieberg, D. (2009). Twitter Vs Blogs. Available: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-5195291-501465.html. Last accessed 1st November 2010.
Zahiid, S, 2010, 'Blogging is so yesterday, politicians turn to Twitter', The Malaysian Insider, 11 February.
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