Practicum Post #6- Julie MacGuidwin

So with the breaking news of Osama Bin Laden being killed, I wanted to see what kind of "coverage" Twitter had of the event. I heard around 9 PM that Obama had a speech prepared for later that night, so I started googling. Within minutes of the announcement that Obama would be making a speech, word spread like WILD FIRE on Twitter about the content. Before any of the news sources (CNN, local news sources, TV news) reported on what was going to be talked about, the information was alllll over Twitter. Most of the posts said "I hear that he's going to be talking about... " Or "Rumor has it...", instead of people confirming that they knew what the speech was about.

I thought this was interesting but I also saw a response of people being kind of upset that the surprise was ruined for them. What really shocked me was how fast the news spread!! Obviously I wasn't looking at other forms of social networking, but I really think that Twitter had a huge part in spreading this news so fast. Even if you googled "Obama speech", there were hundreds and hundred of new Twitter posts coming up every second that made comment about this.

I found this article after googling a bit too, and found that this person came to the same conclusions as me http://www.thelantern.com/opinion/twitter-proves-its-worth-with-bin-laden-coverage-1.2216810. It seems like more people learned about Bin Laden's death on social networking sites BEFORE they even saw the news!

Practicum Post #5- Julie MacGuidwin

Today I wanted to focus on what I've been trying to figure out for the past few months; what in the world do people talk about on twitter, and why? I'm not sure there is a true answer to this question. I'll start by looking at the top trends for Twitter today.... which is #nicknamespeoplehaveforme. Why people are interested in knowing nicknames of OTHER people is completely beyond me. But it does point out to me that Twitter is not just used for getting information and feeling closer to celebs (like I initially believed), but it's always a space to talk about total nothingness and read about total nothingness and to be potentially entertained by it. Therefore, I conclude (even though there is no conclusion to this) that people use twitter for three things (in order of importance) 1. talking about random/nothingness to be entertained 2. to follow, learn about, feel closer to celebs and 3. to connect with people they actually know.

2 months in and I'm still far from addicted to it, by the way! (Ok... Will Ferrell's is funny!)

Practicum Post #4- Julie Macguidwin

So I've been using Twitter for over a month now and I've learned a bit more from my experience. One thing that I recently noticed was that other types of media (such as TV) are actually influencing the trending topics. For example, on Good Morning America yesterday, after Britney Spears performed, the screen had a little birdy chirping saying "#BritneyGMA (in other words, they were telling people what tag to give their posts that talked about Britney's performance.) I thought that was interesting that other forms of media are actually directing conversation and users to go to Twitter. It does make sense, though, since directing people to go tweet about her performance also gets people tweeting about Good Morning America, giving them free publicity.

Another thing I'm still noticing is that it's hard to get noticed. I've tweeted to a lot of "famous people" and haven't heard back from anyone. I do notice that some celebs "retweet" us regular peoples posts, and even sometimes respond to them with an @reply. I'm guessing that so many people tweet about celebs and to celebs that it's really impossible to reply to more than just a few. I'll keep trying!