The Twitter Sensation

Twitter is what some may call a global media phenomenon. It is in fact a global sensation, that started out not too long ago. But how come millions of people know about it? How did the website spread globally?

It spread through word of mouth communication. People who have accounts, or who heard about the website, told their friends about it and their friends told their friends. The cycle continues. Word of mouth communication is only made stronger by another global sensation - the Internet. Through the Internet and social networking websites such as myspace, facebook and now twitter there is instant communication between people who might not be in the same room, country or even continent. All one has to do is write on their friends’ “walls” and if those friends are at that very moment on the Internet, they will get the message. Also, Instant Messaging is very popular and it increases word of mouth communication exponentially. So ideas spread much faster now then they ever used to in the past.

People were talking about the new social networking website (Twitter) for a long duration of time and with great intensity and enthusiasm. Due to the global recognition of this website, there is now a collective consumption of this kind of popular culture. Virtual local scenes are emerging on Twitter through Twitter’s use of hash-tags and lists that people are allowed to make. People of the same subculture who do not live in the same place are constantly, in a way, in the same place because of Twitter. There are many downloadable applications that allow Twitter to be on one’s mobile phone, iPad or laptop. So people are constantly communicating with one another.

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As seen, Twitter can be studied sociologically. The concept of Twitter fits in perfectly with the interaction approach of popular culture. This approach focuses on the smaller and informal processes of communication such as word of mouth. This approach depends on interactions between small groups of people and the influences they have through those small actions and does not depend on big-budget marketing. This is exactly what Twitter does. One way it does this is by the trending topics one sees on the side bar. A concept or idea that started out between a couple of people somehow spreads around a region or the world and gains global recognition.

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Anger Day

What is happening in Egypt is big. Though it was expected, no one knew when or how it was going to happen. A few days after what happened in Tunisia, I found an invitation on Facebook sent to me by one of my Egyptian friends and named “Anger Friday.” I ignored it and didn’t even bother to see what the event was. I thought it was one of the silly, pointless invitations that people send on Facebook to invite you to attend a meaningless reunion. It wasn’t until I knew that the internet was cut-off from Egypt, that I decided to go into the event’s page and find out what this “Anger Day" was. 

This Facebook page was the start of the Egyptian conflict. I never imagined that through a social networking site people could organize and commit to a real, important event. Such a social network consisting of individuals connected through a variety of relationships was ironically the reason for this protesting movement to have thousands at the beginning and could’ve been millions, if it wasn’t for the cut of the internet. 

Moreover, the facebook was not the only engine for this revolution;  Ghonim's twitter page was another way for people to instantaneously follow what is happening in Egypt.

 



source: CNN





As Grazian mentioned, “Social networks and their connectors provide the structure machinery for the spread of popular fads, fashion," and in this case revolution. The inspiration of this revolution and the creator of the Facebook page was a person named Wael Ghonim who was "well-connected" i.e., enjoys a large number of network ties. These social networking ties enabled him to gather tens of thousands of people in Egypt united by one demand.



source: Al-Jazeera

 

Source: CNN



However, the invitation did not target a specific gender, age or social class otherwise, no one would've showed up because according to the interactional approach of popular culture,  the people that have the strongest personal ties are very similar to each other and therefore have access to the same information. Ghonim's power as a connector didn't depend on how many people he knew; it was how many different kinds of people he knew. Those weak social ties are more effective than the strong ones because they serve as a bridge spanning to separate social worlds.

The revolution's effectiveness came from the verity of people who were protesting. From every class, age group and different cities in the Egyptian society and who had different reasons to protest.

Online social networks

The most popular online social network website

The first website that comes to everyones mind when they first hear online social networks is Facebook. Everyone in the world spends infinite amount of time on the internet, and the worst source of procrastination is Facebook. They spends hours on the website without even realizing the time whooshing by when they should be working on other more important things, such as writing blog posts on Qatar Culture Club! One way of explaining the phenomenon of Facebook is through the interaction theory as there are different groups of individuals coming together, sharing their experiences and culture with the friends added to their profile. Facebook is not the first website that began to fulfill this purpose, there are other online social networks that were online before Facebook even started. Who could forget Myspace, people still use it( just not as much as before), or Hi5 or Bebo, there were many different website that used to bring people together but Facebook is probably the most successful one at doing so.

I always thought the site One of the first social

was called HiS when i was younger network sites I joined

The new design of what was formerly Myspace is now My____. Perhaps it was altered to attract more people to join and stay on their website.

People are attracted to online forms of socializing because they all belong to their own social networks and it is easiest to keep themselves updated by using the internet. Lets go back to Facebook, where you can create different lists where you divide people on your friends list to the different social networks you belong to, such as having different options for family than those compared to high school friends or new acquaintances.

Online social networks are not merely used for entertainment, they can also be used for infotainment (meaning information and entertainment, as i learnt in a recent class). Through new or old acquaintances there could be useful connectors who would be useful for future reference. Theres always that one person on our list who seems to have an opinion on everything and ,as annoying as that might be sometimes, it is useful to have opinion leaders in your circle or friends so that you could have them share their expertise of knowledge about cultural products.