Twitter. Even Barack Obama, the President of the United States uses it and down here you’re wondering if you’re too outdated for good.

For those who doesn’t even know what twitter is, here’s a brief summary about it provided by Wikipedia. 

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length which are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow anybody to access them. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or applications such as Tweetie, Twitterrific, Twitterfon, TweetDeck and feedalizr. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees.

You post within seconds and it’s really efficient when you want to spread information around . People are able to read your tweets from all around the world and it’s much easier to type than a blog post. People are able to “follow” or “track” you which makes it easier for others to know what you’re doing (this is especially useful for relatives and friends to keep track with your daily movements).

Statistics have shown that in the first place is News agency, CNN with a total of 896,455 followers where users are able to keep track with news updates fast. In second place is Britney Spears, American Pop singer with a total of 851,197 followers. Third up is Barack Obama, who has appeared in the news and is a proud user of Twitter. He has a proud figure of 780,261 followers.

Twitter since it was launched, has seem to be the next hot thing on the web. Millions of people around the world are tweeting every single day and are reading other people’s twitter. It’s so easy to use that you can just sms in without getting access to a computer. People tweet about all kinds of things ranging from the latest news to techonlogy tips by Xavier Lur(Top Singaporean Twitter with 54,567 followers).

However, if you think about it, there’s a limit of 140 characters only. Does it make a huge difference of whether you tweet or not ? How much can you say with Twitter ? Letting others to keep track with your daily movements and sharing with others whatever you do. Is it releasing too much personal information online where millions of users can access which just a single click ?

Yet, we can’t deny that techonlogy has advanced to a level that the internet plays more than a major role in our lives. In the news recently was an article about a Singapore lady who got robbed in China of all her personal belongings. All she got was some money given by a policeman there. The police there couldn’t do much and yet she was saved in a couple of days later. Thanks to Facebook, a social networking system. She used the money in a cybercafe so that she could update her profile in Facebook and viola, she got help by her friends’ friends. At this point of time, think about it. It’s a little inlogical in some sense. If you’re in such a situation like her, would you go to the nearest cybercafe and inform your friends and relatives? Or would you instead go to the nearest PHONE booth to get help from your family members ?

Pause and think about it. Has techonlogy integrated so much into our lives that we have to rely on it even in dire situations ? We have gone past the stage of telecommunication and are using the worldwideweb in emergencies. Though I can’t safely say that a majority of the world would have done the same thing but it also doesn’t exclude the fact that many people would actually do the same.

So this tells us a lot about how human has evolved over the centuries. In the past, we don’t have such high end technology where we can just contact our friends and families by just a mere single click. We had to rely on the most basic methods such as writing of letters to communicate with our friends or relatives whether imporant of not, which is considered advance then. However right now, we send mails by the internet and also have the time to tweet others about what we do every day and it is even insignificant.

Isn’t it fascinating? How much of a difference we are from the past ? The question is how did such a minor social networking service become such a success ? How did it even influence so much people to use it when it’s not actually necessary at all ? Think about it .