Weisel: Twitter’s advantages outweigh its downsides

My mom thinks I have a lot of friends. Or at least one friend…. My mom thinks I have a lot of friends. Or at least one friend. Or at least one friend who likes me a lot and texts me all the time. But really, it’s just Twitter, which my mom happens to think is the stupidest invention of all time.

Now, I promise that I have other friends besides Twitter, but let’s face it: The social media service gets a bad rap. Since it was founded in 2006, it has attracted a variety of criticisms, not all of them invalid. Nevertheless, a careful evaluation of its advantages and disadvantages might help change a lot of people’s minds.

Many Internet users, especially busy college students, are wary of tweeting because it actually takes a lot of time. Though the service advertises itself as fast and easy, condensing your thoughts to 140 characters might prove difficult.

Keeping up with the people you follow, as well, is time consuming, especially because you have to scroll through an endless page of tweets with no easy way to search for the one you want. Some Twitter users might be coming to terms with the fact that they just don’t have the time to devote to the site.

Many people also find it easiest to maintain just one social networking profile. In most cases, Twitter takes a back seat to Facebook, which offers many features that Twitter does not, including photo albums, a chance to identify your likes and interests on an informational page and the ability to partake in groups and separate the feeds of your friends. And although pictures can be tweeted, they cannot be displayed in the mass format familiar to Facebook users.

Another thing that discourages users from embracing Twitter is its seeming purposelessness. If I had a nickel for every time my mom asked me, “But what is it for?” then I’d be able to pay off my student loans next week. While the purposes of Facebook are as diverse as keeping up with high school friends to advertising the band you started last weekend, Twitter seems like a venue for spouting random thoughts in bite-sized snippets.

Although it’s possible to follow the thoughts of your old friends and Tweet about your band, the chances that these messages will get lost in a feed is much more likely than on a Facebook page, where updates are separated into categories.

For the above reasons, and many more I’m sure, Twitter has received a variety of harsh criticisms, especially over the past few months. At the same time, I think more people will soon recognize its advantages.

Consider, for instance, that Twitter users can take advantage of free or discounted products, shows or appearances. Recently Ingrid Michaelson used only Twitter and Facebook to announce her upcoming tour and included a password for obtaining pre-order tickets. Other musical artists and celebrities have also announced free shows and surprise appearances via Twitter.

The service is also surprisingly useful for personal relationships. It’s much less invasive to follow people on Twitter than to ask for their phone number or even friend them on Facebook. It’s a friendly gesture that could be helpful in the future if you need to contact someone that you have no other way of contacting. At the beginning of the semester I followed a girl in one of my classes on Twitter and was able to tweet at her when I didn’t understand our homework assignment. Now we’ve exchanged numbers and are better friends because of it.

But perhaps the best and most important advantage Twitter affords is its ability to immediately notify users of emergencies or breaking news. Following the accounts of Pittsburgh news outlets like WPXI, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette or even our own The Pitt News ensures that you’ll receive constant updates on events going on around the city. While some are as mundane as the next Pirates loss, others can be urgent or important.

When the shooting occurred at Western Psych, I was spending the day in New York with my mom. If it weren’t for Twitter sending me frequent updates on the situation, I would not have known that the people I knew in Oakland were safe or what the police were doing to handle the situation. And during the series of bomb threats, Twitter provided similarly expedient reports.

While there are clear disadvantages to Twitter, its positives shouldn’t be discounted. After all, if Twitter fails, how will my mom ever be convinced that I have a social life?

Contact Elizabeth at eaw62@pitt.edu