What exactly is Twitter?

[JackieO]

I know it sounds stupid, but I don't really get this whole twitter thing. Like can everyone read your text messages if they subscribe to your account or something? Do you have to invite people, or can Joe Blow come and see your messages? Do people like read celebrity twitters? It all seems strange to me... Whats the big whoop anyhow? Just wondering. I'm not trying to offend. I'm the one who doesn't understand things anyway, so...
Sorry. I thought this was society and culture. And as a society, people are using twitter. I don't know how it got into languages anyway... But humor me.

[Opal]

It's a waste of time.

[skinnybrother964]

Not sure what this is doing in languages.

I don´t use it myself but its my understanding that it´s a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace.

ETA: This might explain things better to you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

[jusjokin12]

Twitter is a short message blogging. It is a social network but different than MySpace or Facebook in that just messaging takes place to those who you are contacted with. Depending on how your account is set up as with other social networking sites you can enable privacy on it so only those you want can see the messages. The rule though is not to say anything personal or private on these sites as you may never know who is looking over your shoulder. Example many have not monitored who is on their network and talked about going on vacation only to come home finding their home cleaned out,

[Shana]

It's just another one of 8 gaZILLion ways to keep in touch in this world!

Cause, you know, we don't have enough ways to talk to our friends that don't involve actually SPEAKING to them!

There's a website...just search Twitter...they'll tell you it's all really cool and great, but you get the exact same thing and more by using the status update feature of Facebook or Myspace.

It's supposed to be better, cause when they started it, you couldn't do mobile phones with FB and Myspace, but you can, now, so I think it's just a waste of time.

Anyone can check in and see what you have posted, and anyone can subscribe to your feed, and get it automatically. There are spammers there, like anyplace else on the web, and I get a request to follow me (you can set it up so that people have to ask, and you can reject them) from someone questionable just about once or twice a week. The ones that haven't had their accounts removed before I check on them have all been porn sites, or trying to sell stupid junk I don't want. I block them, and report them, and when enough people do so, their accounts are removed.

I follow a couple of celebrities, and I hear, if you tweet them, some will tweet you back.


Of course, none of this has anything to do with languages, which is where you have posted this.