Twitter has become the buzz among many so called "socal media experts"- celebrities and people from all over the world have profiles allowing fans and even foes to stay updated on their whereabouts and whatfors.
Twitter has become the buzz among many so called "socal media experts"- celebrities and people from all over the world have profiles allowing fans and even foes to stay updated on their whereabouts and whatfors.
Twitter can be described as a micro-blog, or a mini online diary. It enables you to type the answer to "What Are You Doing?" in 140 characters or less and as frequently as you like. This is similar to writing a status update on Facebook, enabling you to read what others are up to or talking about and vice versa.
Also you are able to see what other people are writing by choosing to ‘ follow’ them. This means their updates, or tweets, will come up on your home page in chronological order. Other people can also follow your updates, building up a followers list which can be seen when someone visits your home page.
According to crunchbase.com, Twitter was founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 but was publicly launched in July 2006. Since then it has taken the online world by storm. Celebrities ranging from Paris HIlton, Russel Simmons, Serena Williams, GlenUnathi and even some of South African political parties like the ANC and the DA use Twitter to publise events.
In a recent article published on BBC news, tennis players were banned from using Twitter, signs posted around the USTA National Tennis Center read: "Important player notice: Twitter Warning: The Tennis Integrity Unit warned that Twitter messages could violate anti-corruption rules, and that tweeting is not allowed on court during matches in The US." The USTA added that they are afraid that Twitter updates could be used for sending "certain sensitive and inside information concerning a match or other matches and/or players and this should be avoided". According to them private information includes "information about the likely participation or likely performance of a player in an event or concerning the weather, court conditions, status, outcome or any other aspect of an event which is known by a Covered Person and is not information in the public domain."
Journalist Sim Kyazze is a regular Tweeter and agrees, saying that he belives that "Twitter can defilitely be used to publisise private information because it’s one person talking to potentially millions of people at the same time, I don’t know why people would do that, there are things that are really not for the consumption of everyone."
The world’ s number five tennis player Andy Roddick however disagrees and has cristicised the attempts by the US Open to regulate players’ updates.
"I think it’s lame that the US Open is trying to regulate our tweeting," Roddick posted on his Twitter page. "I understand the on-court issue but not sure they can tell us if we can or can’t do it on our own time."
