Twitter: Real Time Stories

As I was reading the 2011 article "Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media" by Jan H. Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens, Ian P. McCarthy, and Bruno S. Silvestre, I paused on the section about the "conversations" building block of social media. This sentence jumped out at me:

"...the conversations are like pieces of a rapidly changing puzzle which, when aggregated, combine to produce an overall image or message." 

This reminded me of the recent change in Twitter archival methods by the Library of Congress. Did you know that up until January 2018, the LOC archived every single tweet made by everyone? That's right! They made the agreement in 2010 to archive tweets since Twitter's inception in 2006. Who knew that Twitter would grow to include hundreds of billions of tweets! The agreement included just the text of the tweets, which means that any media posted with a tweet was lost.

The LOC was forced to re-imagine its storage methods multiple times to keep up with the growing number of tweets each day. Finally, in late 2017, the LOC decided to stop archiving every tweet. Instead, they will focus on special events, such as elections, sports games, news, tragedies, and major celebrations. Essentially, any moment that makes an impact.

I find this to be a great strategic decision. Keeping up with Twitter can feel like trying to drink from a fire hydrant, and the LOC's plan to be more focused makes it easier for researchers to digest. These tweets will show a snapshot of real time events happening around the world, from a variety of perspectives.

Real Time
As many of us already know, Twitter utilizes the hashtag function, which makes it easier to find posts related to a single topic. But what happens when something is happening and people don't have the time to stop and decide what the hashtag will be? I remember when Osama Bin Laden was killed, and there were tweets from civilians not far from the incident. They didn't know what was going on, but could hear the turmoil and gunshots and posted about it. Not long after, it was publicly announced that Bin Laden was dead, and then all of the tweets made sense. This is just one example of many instances when tweets around the world showed other perspectives of major events.

Twitter has also been used used to save lives, such as tweeting a location for help in the flood waters from 2017's tropical storm Harvey in Texas. The twitter community can be quite helpful in a pinch!

Twitter is making it easier for people to keep up with events in real time. In October 2017, Twitter released a feature called "Happening Now" which highlights tweets from the same topic. The feature focuses on major sports events, but is expected to expand to include news, entertainment, and more. The algorithm is quite smart- it doesn't need the words "baseball" "Cubs" or "Yankees" to include tweets about the game. It can also identify tweets as vague as "Noooo!  Come on, you had that!!" The algorithm is also unbiased about whose tweets it includes. It can be anyone's!

#SeeEverySide
This is the beauty of Twitter- every single person has a voice, regardless of religion, political party, beliefs, or if you like Pepsi over Coke (seriously, why would you ever?).  Last year, Twitter began a new campaign called #SeeEverySide, which promotes the all-encompassing nature of the Twitterverse. They even made a commercial for it! Did you see it? This is the part that I like best about Twitter. Not only do you get real time events, you get it from every perspective you could possibly want. This helps provide a more well-rounded view of what's going on and what people are experiencing. This is especially important because Pew Research found that more people are getting their news from social media, and Twitter is on the rise. 

As a librarian, I am drawn to the idea of #SeeEverySide. I think that a lot of social media tends to be polarized, as individuals build networks and communities of like-minded people. I watch my friends on Facebook threaten to delete people that have opposing viewpoints. Once the "Happening Now" feature is developed to include more topics, #SeeEverySide will truly be possible without utilizing the hashtag feature for specific events. It will expose readers to other thoughts and opinions they had not considered, and, who knows, may even help bridge the divide and inspire empathy. The combination has has true potential, especially if it is front and center when a user opens the app. 

Maybe it's my own hope and optimism for the future, but I think Twitter has a real shot at bringing people together again for the greater good.