Is Twitter taking over the world?

theguardian.com

theguardian                                                                                  15:09 BST, Monday 2 October 2013

TECHNOLOGY

Is Twitter taking over the world?

As Twitter stats continue to go through the roof, we begin to wonder, what is so special about tweeting, hash tags and following?

‘Twitter has undoubtedly become the world’s leading social media site.’

Do you think this statement is too bold? Think again. Recent statistics (see ‘20 illuminating facts about Twitter; 2012 edition,’ S Collier) indicate that Twitter has fully integrated itself into everyday society with the site now boasting 100 million active users. Not convinced? 15 per cent of adults that used the Internet in February 2012 used Twitter. Still not convinced? The site has a total of 500 million registered profiles and the number is growing.

So why is the site so popular? It may be due to its ‘asymmetric’ system (as it is called by the writer, K Bevan) in which users can ‘follow’ other users without going through the sending-confirming friendship fiasco which occurs on Twitter’s social media superpower sibling, Facebook. It could also be argued that Twitter is appealing because of its expanding celebrity fan base. An additional statistic states that 40 per cent of users do not tweet, themselves, but they use the site for reading news and following other accounts.