4 Unique Features of Twitter as a Social Platform
In the wonderful world of social media, Twitter is an intriguing beast. Originally introduced as a ‘micro-blogging’ platform, it rose from obscurity to become one of the most influential players in this burgeoning market.
Today there are around 336 million active users on Twitter, which puts it behind titans like Facebook and Instagram. However, its power goes far beyond its pure popularity, to the point that it is regularly harnessed to both document and shape global events.
Here’s a look at four unique features that Twitter brings to the table, which should convince the unconverted that now is a good time to sign up.
Genuine Diversity
A lot of commentators complain about the creation of ‘echo chambers’ on social media, where people surround themselves with people spouting opinions that they already agree with, which can limit someone’s worldview significantly.
Conversely Twitter is more of a melting pot than its closed-off competitors. You can follow a casino company Twitter profile, your favourite author, your current celebrity crush and your funny friend from work, all in one place.
If you’re worried about stories of harassment and bullying, Twitter has taken steps to curb this in recent years. And if you simply don’t like the idea of posting but want to fill your feed with tweets from interesting people, that’s totally fine too. There’s no pressure to contribute, although it does make the experience a little more engaging and communal.
Twitter takes a lot of flak for various reasons, but its uniqueness and the support of its burgeoning user base are sure to sustain it for years to come.
Truly Meaningful Trending Topics
Most social platforms and media websites now offer visitors the chance to get an overview of which posts, articles and stories are gaining traction. But Twitter was one of the first to perfect this and remains at the cutting edge in terms of the way that emerging trends are handled.
As well as a simple rundown of the hashtags that are being discussed by the largest number of people in a given geographic area, it has the Moments tab that offers a curated overview of the top topics from the past 24 hours.
The Moments tab has drawn a lot of scorn, but it benefits from being managed by real people, not simply generated using an algorithm. This helps provide a bit more variety to the coverage, while ensuring that users are up to date with the latest events, memes and online happenings that are steering the conversation.
Short-Form Publishing
It might sound grandiose to think of sending a tweet as ‘publishing’ something, but this is certainly an appropriate word given the far-reaching effects that a single post can have.
There was furore when Twitter upped the limit for a tweet from the original 140 characters to 280 characters in 2017. Many saw this as a subversion of the platform’s core ethos as a medium, while others believe that this change has been positive and made it easier to hold meaningful discussions of weighty ideas without getting cut off.
Flexible Posting Potential
Most other social platforms are a lot more focused than Twitter in terms of the features they offer. Instagram is all about images, Facebook is all about friends, Snapchat is all about sharing pics and videos in a disposable way. Twitter, on the other hand, is a jack of all trades, which has held it back in the past.
However, thanks to persistent efforts to update its underlying infrastructure and revise the interface, it is now a much more cohesive and flexible service.
Firing off short messages that consist only of letters and symbols is still an option, of course. But today users can create polls to rank different topics, add image collages which tell a story in a few frames, embed videos to entertain or shock and much more besides.
Best of all, Twitter now manages to blend this multimedia, multi-discipline experience in a way that does not feel fragmented or dissatisfying. People who are intimidated by Reddit, or feel too old for Tumblr, will get a lot out of it for this reason.