How important is it to ‘TWEET’ 
With social networking gaining widespread popularity; Twitter has its own stake in the industry

Jyoti K. Singh
New Delhi, June 28: Social networking sites seem to have carved a special niche for themselves in modern day communities and they are sure to stay long. From anyone to everyone uses these sites for varied purposes and our student fraternity is who seems to be quite addicted to these sites that serve as the best leisure activity to them.

And Twitter scores the highest when it comes to social networking. But experts from the education industry and most of the sociologists still keep brooding over the very need of ‘twitter’ for students. “I do not understand why do the students need to be hooked to a computer when they should ideally be reading a book or doing something more conducive,” says Amitava Bhargava, a sociologist.     

But technology experts have quite a contrasting view when it comes to students’ usage of twitter. Some of them feel that Twitter could actually assist a student in ways more than one. But before dissecting its usage; let us first understand - what does Twitter stand for? If one was to believe the definition at Wikipedia, it meant

“a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. These tweets are 140-character limit messages which is so since Twitter's messaging system was initially set for compatibility with SMS” 

Needless to mention, twitter can serve to be quite a useful communication tool giving a leverage to the user of writing whatever comes to his/her mind; without having to administer any formalities.  Students can even take advantage of twitter by voicing their opinions or posting their views about a particular topic or subject. And if their fellow mates or teachers follow these posts, the point of the person who has posted the said tweet becomes quite clear to everyone. In case the tweet has something of common interest, a productive discussion can follow thereon.

Another good feature of Twitter is the ease it allows an individual to update his/her set of followers by sending a single text. Furthermore, this status update is quite quick too. One can send this SMS even during class! Yes, you can tweet using your cell phone. Thus there is no need to keep sitting at home in front of the PC or to wait for dad to come home for using his laptop – you are connected to your peer group wherever you go! 

And, if you own an iPhone, you can simply access number of Twitter clients like Tweetie that may help you in a lot of ways Right from managing multiple Twitter accounts to viewing Twitter trends and from carrying out the custom searches to accessing complete user profiles; everything is just a single click away. “Twitter is simply great. It has changed my life for better. I stay connected with my group 24 into 7 now and also submit all my assignments on time. And you know what, I have so many friends and followers from almost every part of the world now,” says Rajarshi Bhowmick, a BBA student at Bareli.  

To add more, the site may also enhance your writing skills for if some one retweets you, you may follow it and compare your writing with the latter. You can even post about any topic you need information upon and the whole world would be eager to help. Does that not sound great? Yes; then go and open up a twitter account, it can change you for better!!!