Blog 8

Blog 8

  

          Twitter is a popular social media account that uses “short message length, and one-way connections, lead themselves effectively to random and regular updates on almost any form of personal or professional activity,” (Harrington, et al., 2013). Twitter was a newer platform for me, I only made mine a few years ago for a class at CNU actually and never really used it since. Even though the application has been on my phone for a few years I honestly never look at it, so getting in the habit of checking it a few times a day Monday through Friday has been quiet the challenge. I have learned how fun and entertaining Twitter can be and I think I will continue to use it. I feel Twitter is a uses and gratifications platform as discussed in the Why People Use Social Media reading and personally I use it mostly for social interaction, information seeking, and entertainment (Whiting & Williams, 2013).  

             Some challenges I faced when starting the daily tweets and retweets was coming up with something to say about social media every day. I thought it would be pretty easy because there is so much to say about social media, but coming up with original content to talk about that my classmates would want to favorite or retweet was way harder than it seemed. When it came to tweeting something original I quickly noticed that I had to keep up with what my other classmates said so I did not repeat the same thing which happened more often than I expected. Overall, the most challenging part was just remembering to tweet. I set a reminder on my phone for every day at 10 AM so I would not forget, then the next challenge was remembering to retweet throughout the day as my classmates tweeted. I found myself once or twice forgetting the hashtag, luckily I did not seem like the only one that forgot. Below is a screenshot of two times when I forgot the hashtag and had to add it in as a comment. 

           Even with all the challenges I really did enjoy engaging in tweeting regularly. I enjoyed being able to think deeper about social media and the content I was posting to come up with something unique and relatable. Having to tweet Monday through Friday made me focus more on what is currently going on in social media. I enjoyed reading what my classmates had to say about social media and I released we mostly recognized the same things, but I enjoyed learning more from them.  

              It was super interesting to take part in the live tweeting exercise since that is something I have never done before. That was definitely one of my favorite activities we have done because it was so out of my comfort zone, I honestly would never live tweet, but it was actually so fun. It was interesting seeing what other classmates thought about the episode and getting to kind of bounce off what they were saying. I personally have not seen much live tweeting besides during The Bachelor season, but it was cool to take part. “Twitter and services alike, become a kind of virtual loungeroom, connecting the active audience of specific TV shows,” so my classmates and I were able to connect on Twitter about a Scandal and discuss the show as we watch together. Below is a screenshot of what I tweeted during our live tweeting season, I felt like I tweeted way more than I actually did. It takes talent to tweet and watch the show at the same time. 

  

          From this experience I learned that it takes work and can be difficult to create and maintain a social media account. Sometimes you really have to do research and deeply think about what to tweet so that you can reach and connect with the largest amount of people. Also, I learned how easily tweets can spread, sometimes I noticed random people retweeting or favoriting my tweet which I have never personally experienced before. Twitter can be very hit or miss depending on what time of day you tweet or what you tweet about, I still have not quite figured out when the ideal tweeting time is. 

         

           Throughout this daily tweeting assignment I think I fell short with some of the content I was tweeting. It is so easy to get caught up in it and just tweet something kind of random just to get it done for the day and I quickly realized that I would not get many, if any retweets. I believe the score I should earn for the Twitter component in class is a 46 out of 50 points so a 92%. Even though I did tweet every day, sometimes I forgot the hashtag so I had to put it in the comments or I did not have good enough quality tweets. As shown below in the screenshot, there were a few instances where I would not get any retweets or favorites.    

References

Harrington, S., Highfield, T., Bruns, A. (2013.) Twitter and Television Participants: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 10

Whiting, A & Williams, D. (2013.) Why People Use Social Media A Uses and Gratifications Approach. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal