Trending now: Twitter

As reported in the Yahoo! article "Nickelback  Haters Get a Taste of Their Own Medicine on Twitter," Canadian rock band Nickelback recently found criticism in an unexpected place: Twitter.  

While normally very congenial towards their more than 140,000 fans on Twitter, Nickelback decided to fire back some snarky replies at each of the people who have been directing insulting tweets towards them.

With as much negative attention as Nickelback has received elsewhere, I can't fault them for trying to rile up their detractors. Twitter is a medium where such exchanges between individuals are easily achieved.

However, Nickelback and their critics are using Twitter atypically. Ideally, a celebrity will use the site to interact with their fans on a more personal level, tweeting about their projects, answering questions or sharing their thoughts, but this is not its only use.

Whether you use the website or not, many of you have at least a passing familiarity with the social networking service, Twitter. These days, pretty much everyone and their grandmother has a Facebook account, but not everyone has been so quick to adopt Twitter.

Many dismiss the potential of it immediately, either on preconceived notions of its uselessness or unwillingness to adapt to new media.

The website describes itself as a "real-time information network that connects you to the latest information about what you find interesting." This happens via short bursts of information called "tweets," capped at 140 characters; you could think of it as micro-blogging or a standalone version of Facebook's status updates. By subscribing to another user, you become one of their "followers" and have easy access to the information they wish to share.

With that explanation, one might wonder exactly what types of information people actually share using Twitter. The answer to that is as diverse as the people who make up its user base. Kate, an active user, stated that she simply felt "Twitter's purpose is to let people just say what's on their minds and stuff."

There is certainly a narcissistic quality to Twitter at times. "Honestly, it allows people to feel important, right then and there. You won a game of pool? Now everyone knows, seconds after it happened," says Travis Braun, a non-Twitter user. "The sooner someone knows, the more gratifying it is."

Many people share this impression about the service, believing it to be a vainglorious waste of time; but Twitter has many beneficial purposes. Jordan Frazier, a linguistics major at the University of Oklahoma, explained that one of her professors utilizes Twitter to keep his students updated about thoughts that he has regarding his their readings.

While this sort of interaction may not be the standard for communication between professors and students, it is definitely a way of opening up an additional channel of communication and enabling easier access to information and assistance for parties on both sides.

Allec Ribeiro, a Brazilian Twitter user, uses the site to collect his thoughts and calm himself down, but this wasn't always the case. "It was quite hard to understand what this is all about for awhile, until I started using it the way I do today," Riberio explained.

The biggest barrier, perhaps, to enjoying everything that which Twitter has to offer is figuring out exactly what to use it for. Initially, I tweeted very little and was unsure about what to do with my account, opting to just follow celebrities or companies that I was interested in.

Soon enough, however, a whole new world opened up for me when I started making friends and contacts with like-minded people, not just from my own city or country, but the entire world.

Before I knew it, I was reading about the lives of an international web of friends, sharing conversations, exchanging advice, and even helping each other with things like homework or in this case, a newspaper article.

Social networks like Twitter certainly aren't for everyone, and while it's important to maintain physical relationships with other individuals, in this increasingly digital age we live in, much can be gained from keeping an open mind towards the connectivity that these virtual communities can offer. Like any form of technology, it can be used for the wrong reasons, as was the situation between Nickelback and their rivals.

Despite this, whether interacting with your favorite celebrities, sharing what's on your mind, making new friends, or supplementing classes, Twitter's potential benefits vastly outweigh the negatives.