It's an Era of Twitter!

A new free social networking and micro-blogging service, Twitter, has been recorder to have a growth by 76.8% from February 09 until March 09, with monthly visit rate 6.99% up to 134,536,240 and yearly growth rate at 1,382% (mashable.com 2009). Is it a new trend? Absolutely, yes it is.

Twitter is not only about social networking where people keep updating their friends about their life. It is also a medium where information and latest news is spread to all over the world between seconds (sometimes even before other media actually notices there is such news). It is very impressing to see how fast an info being evolved and commented. And thanks to the advanced technology, people able to tweet everywhere, even in space (e.g. Michael J. Massimino).

Figure 1. Example of twitter page (Source:http://twitter.com/home)

So, how famous is twitter? Guardian.co.uk (Jan 2009), Twitter Fan Wiki (June 2009), and celebritytweet (2009) listed hundreds of prominence people – celebrity, politicians, government officials, popular bloggers, corporation, news agency, musician – all over the world who are actively tweeting everyday, including Asthon Kutcher, the first person who has 1 million followers on April 16th, 2009, and today (June 10th) the actor has over than 2 million followers!

Realizing this phenomenon, twitter is being a proposed as a subject to be included in primary school curriculum in England, together with blogging, Wikipedia, and podcasts (guardian.co.uk 2009).

Related articles and links:
• Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary schools shake-up
• Tweeting the terror: How social media reacted to Mumbai
• Hubble astronaut send first ever Twitter message from space to say he is ‘enjoying the view’
• Tila Tequila is Dead – Murder Announced Via Twitter (Photos)

• Surgeons send 'tweets' from operating room
• Ashton Kutcher hits 2 million followers on twitter
• Celebrities on twitter
• Twitter Fan Wiki
• Celebrity Tweet

Here are some Malaysian prominence twitter accounts: Najib Razak, Tony Pua, Lim Kit Siang, Tony Fernandes, The Star, DAP Malaysia.

References:

Curtis, P 2009, Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary schools shake-up, guardian.co.uk, viewed 7th June 2009, http://aa.mc582.mail.yahoo.com/mc/welcome?.gx=0&.rand=4dhcnc5a4r7ip.

Schroeder, S 2009, The Web in Numbers: The Rise of Social Media, mashable.com, viewed 9th June 2009, http://mashable.com/2009/04/17/web-in-numbers-social-media/.

Schroeder, S 2009, The Web in Numbers: Twitter Phenomenal Growth Suddenly Stops, mashable.com, viewed 9th June 2009, http://mashable.com/2009/06/09/web-in-numbers-may/.