Twitter [1 ed.] 9781532158414, 9781532116926

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Essential Library

Today’s top technology companies play an increasingly central role in our lives. People habitually use Apple or Samsung smartphones to monitor social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Amazon and Netflix are disrupting the shopping and television industries. Google dominates online search and advertising, and Microsoft’s software runs on the vast majority of the world’s personal computers. In the Tech Titans series, delve into the history of these companies, get to know the products and people associated with them, and consider the ways they are changing our world.

MARCINIAK

TECH TITANS

TWITTER BY KRISTIN MARCINIAK

TWITTER

AMAZON APPLE FACEBOOK GOOGLE

MICROSOFT NETFLIX SAMSUNG TWITTER

I S B N 978-1-5321-1692-6

9

90000

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BOOKS IN THIS SET

781532 116926

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TECH TITANS

TWITTER Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

BY KRISTIN MARCINIAK

CONTENT CONSULTANT Anthony Rotolo Media Scholar, Speaker, and Consultant

Essential Library

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ABDOBOOKS.COM Published by Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO, PO Box 398166, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55439. Copyright © 2019 by Abdo Consulting Group, Inc. International copyrights reserved in all countries. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. Essential LibraryTM is a trademark and logo of Abdo Publishing. Printed in the United States of America, North Mankato, Minnesota. 092018 012019

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Cover Photo: Natee Meepian/Shutterstock Images Interior Photos: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto/Getty Images, 4–5; Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service/AP Images, 6; Alexey Boldin/Shutterstock Images, 11; Shutterstock Images, 12, 27, 54, 76–77; Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Images, 14–15; Paul Sakuma/AP Images, 17; Debby Wong/Shutterstock Images, 19; Jack Dempsey/ Invision for Universal Music Group/AP Images, 23; David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/ Getty Images, 24–25; Lionel Cironneau/AP Images, 29; Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Images, 31; Red Line Editorial, 33, 47, 53; iStockphoto, 34–35; Bebeto Matthews/ AP Images, 39; Mike Stobe/Getty Images for the NHL/Getty Images, 41; Danny Moloshok/AP Images, 44–45; Antonio Guillem/iStockphoto, 50; Michel du Cille/ The Washington Post/Getty Images, 56–57; Robert Alexander/Archive Photos/Getty Images, 61; Nico El Nino/Shutterstock Images, 63; Charles Dharapak/AP Images, 66–67, 70; Rolf Vennenbernd/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images, 83; Monique Jaques/ Corbis Historical/Getty Images, 86–87; Mido Semsem/Shutterstock Images, 89; Wolfram Kastl/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images, 92; Ted S. Warren/AP Images, 95; Thomas Koch/Shutterstock Images, 97 Editor: Arnold Ringstad Series Designer: Laura Polzin Librar y of Congress Control Number: 2018948316 Publisher ’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Marciniak, Kristin, author. Title: Twitter / by Kristin Marciniak. Description: Minneapolis, Minnesota : Abdo Publishing, 2019 | Series: Tech titans | Includes online resources and index. Identifiers: ISBN 9781532116926 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 9781532159763 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Twitter (Firm)--Juvenile literature. | Tweeting (Microblogs)--Juvenile literature. | Social media--Juvenile literature. | Technology--Juvenile literature. Classification: DDC 006.754--dc23

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CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE

TWITTER TAKEOVER

4

CHAPTER TWO

THE START-UP

14

CHAPTER THREE

TWITTER GOES MAINSTREAM

24

CHAPTER FOUR

THE THREE TIERS OF TWITTER USE

34

CHAPTER FIVE

BUILDING BRANDS WITH TWITTER

44

CHAPTER SIX

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TWITTER’S INFLUENCE ON NEWS MEDIA

56

CHAPTER SEVEN

TWITTER’S PLACE IN POLITICS

66

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE DARK SIDE OF TWITTER

76

CHAPTER NINE

SOCIAL ACTIVISM ON TWITTER TIMELINE

98

86

SOURCE NOTES

106

ESSENTIAL FACTS

100

INDEX

110

GLOSSARY

102

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

112

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

104

ABOUT THE CONSULTANT

112

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CHAPTER ONE

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TWITTER TAKEOVER

T

he first major news story of 2018 reads like the subplot of a comedy movie: the president of the United States uses social

media to taunt a communist dictator about the size and strength of the dictator’s nuclear weapons. The dictator responds with name calling and insults of his own. Eight weeks later, the two leaders make plans for a face-to-face meeting, the first-ever summit between the top

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leadership of the two countries. This scenario might play for laughs in a movie theater, but it’s far more frightening in real life. After months of mounting tension between North Korea and the United States, North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un warned in a radio address on December 31, 2017, that he had a “nuclear button” on his desk. 1 The North Korean government is known for this kind of grand President Trump’s use of Twitter has given him a way to speak directly to his supporters, his critics, and even fellow world leaders.

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posturing, and previous United States presidents have refused to take the bait. But Donald Trump isn’t like other US presidents. He seems to say whatever is on his mind, usually in the most public forum possible: Twitter. On January 2, 2018, President Trump tweeted: “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” 2 Within minutes, the internet was ablaze with criticism

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and congratulations from around the globe. Trump’s most

Tensions over the North Korean nuclear program heated up in 2017 and early 2018.

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stalwart supporters praised the president for standing up to the North Korean dictator, but many others shook their heads in dismay and anger. Trump had spent the past year publicly insulting Kim both on Twitter and in speeches, calling him “little rocket man” and making fun of his short and portly build. 3 Would this latest show of disrespect lead to an attack on US soil? Several government officials feared as much. “These childish attacks raise the risk of stumbling into an avoidable war,” Democratic senator Tim Kane of Virginia tweeted on January 3, 2018. 4 Others, such as former vice president Joe

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Biden, decried Trump’s jabs at Kim as unpresidential.

THE NEW “PRESIDENTIAL” Presidents and other high-ranking government officials undoubtedly say things about their opponents and enemies behind closed

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PRESIDENTIAL EXEMPTION Some political analysts interpreted Trump’s taunts of and tirades about Kim as threats against Kim’s life. Making direct threats about another person is a violation of Twitter’s Terms of Use policy. In most cases, users who violate Twitter’s policies are kicked off the site. That’s not the case for world leaders. In a statement made after Trump’s tweet of January 2, 2018, Twitter said removing world leaders from the site for abusive behavior would “not silence” them but instead “hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.” 5 In other words, Trump’s inflammatory tweets are allowed because blocking them would hinder the public’s understanding of his positions and policies.

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doors that they would never say in public. That’s what made Trump’s January 2 message so extraordinary. Instead of sharing his feelings with a small circle of friends and advisors, he posted them on Twitter for everyone to see. Around the globe, people who have never met Trump know exactly what he’s thinking. That’s unprecedented in American politics, and Trump knows it. “My use of social media is not Presidential—it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL,” he tweeted on July 1, 2017. “Make America Great Again!” 6 Trump isn’t the first president to use Twitter. That honor goes to Barack Obama, whose election in 2008 is often attributed to his use of social media as a branding and informational tool. But Trump is the first president Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

to give an unfiltered glimpse into his policies and his thinking, a few short sentences at a time. He was an avid user of Twitter even before he became a candidate for the presidency in 2015, tweeting about everything from global politics to celebrity breakups. Though he was on record saying he would stop tweeting if elected president, he continues to give his more than 50 million followers daily updates about everything on his mind. 7 Unlike Obama’s tweets, which were often crafted by

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his staff, Trump’s tweets are usually written by the president himself. Trump views Twitter as a direct connection to the American people. A longtime critic of the mainstream media, he uses Twitter to sidestep traditional news outlets— which he views as biased—to bring his message straight to the public. Though aides and lawyers have tried to halt his outbursts, Twitter remains Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Trump’s primary method of communication to the world beyond the White House walls.

THE PRESIDENTIAL TWITTER FEED In addition to any personal Twitter feeds they may have, sitting presidents also use the @POTUS Twitter account. This was started during Barack Obama’s administration. When Obama left office in 2017, so did his tweets. They’re archived at @POTUS44. Obama used his presidential account to share photos and encouraging words, as well as information about policies and legislation. As of 2018, Trump’s presidential account, which is run by Trump’s staff, is mostly retweets from his personal account, @RealDonaldTrump, and his administration’s allies. Though it’s a personal account, the White House, the Justice Department, and several judges have demonstrated that they view tweets made on @RealDonaldTrump as official White House statements.

LIFE IN THE TWITTERVERSE Trump isn’t alone. At the end of 2017, Twitter counted more than 330 million users worldwide. From Argentina to Zimbabwe and everywhere in between, Twitter has changed the way people share and acquire information.

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That wasn’t the intention of the company’s four founders in 2006 when they started tinkering with what would eventually become Twitter. What began as a way to update friends about one’s whereabouts and activities turned into a global phenomenon, influencing everything from celebrity culture to political revolutions.

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TWITTER USE AROUND THE WORLD As of 2016, 21 percent of Twitter’s users were located in the United States. That’s the highest percentage of people from any single country. But Twitter is also found on every continent—even Antarctica— and in hundreds of countries. Brazil has the second-greatest portion of Twitter users (8.4 percent), followed by Japan (7.8 percent) and Mexico (7.1 percent). 8 The service supports 40 languages and has business offices in 35 cities around the world. 9 To expand its user base even further, Twitter rolled out Twitter Lite in 2017. A pared-down version of the Twitter app, Twitter Lite was designed for regions with poor cellular and internet service and gives coverage in two dozen countries, including El Salvador, Serbia, Malaysia, and Tanzania.

On its face, Twitter is a fairly simple application. Once a user signs up for the free service, he or she can post anything— pictures, videos, GIFs, links, or plain text—as long as it fits within the allotted character count. Each new post is placed at the top of the user’s feed, which shows all of a user’s posts in reverse chronological order. Unless the user makes his or her account private, anyone can access the user’s posts, including people who don’t have Twitter accounts of their own.

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Users can access Twitter on a wide variety of devices, including laptops, tablets, smartphones, and smart watches.

That’s what makes Twitter different from other forms

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of social media. With the click of the “Follow” button, users link themselves to strangers from around the world. News is shared, social issues are debated, and personal connections are formed. People freely exchange ideas and information regardless of age, gender, nationality, experiences, and wealth. Twitter provides regular people the same platform as those in positions of power. Everyone has the opportunity to make their voice heard. Twitter has been a tool of the people from the moment of its inception. Within a few short years,

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From its headquarters in San Francisco, California, Twitter has created one of the world’s most influential social media services.

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it morphed beyond a status-messaging tool to a widely accepted form of communication used around the globe. Yet even its four founders—Evan Williams, Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey, and Biz Stone—couldn’t have guessed its eventual reach

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and influence.

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SIZING UP SOCIAL MEDIA Social media is a general term that describes electronic communication that allows the active sharing of information between two or more parties. The key word is active. To be considered social media, a website has to allow its users a forum to communicate with the site’s authors or other users on the site. Because of this, the “social media” label applies to more than just Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Weblogs, or blogs, fall under the umbrella of social media if readers can respond to the writer directly on the site. So do news sites such as the Washington Post, which allows comments on many of its articles. Social media isn’t just about catching up with friends. It’s also about making connections and engaging in conversation.

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CHAPTER TWO

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THE START-UP

T

witter’s story begins with Evan Williams. In 1999, he invented Blogger, one of the first blogging tools. In 2003, he sold Blogger to

Google in exchange for some cash and a lot of Google stock options. He spent two more years working on Blogger as an employee of Google before leaving the company and cashing out his Google stock. At 32, he was a multimillionaire. Williams’s friend and neighbor, Noah Glass, was not a multimillionaire. He had been interested in audio blogging, which later became

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known as podcasting, in the mid-2000s. Glass didn’t have any money to fund his new project, called Odeo, but he knew someone who did. Williams, who has always been more interested in starting businesses than managing their day-to-day operations, agreed to fund the development of Odeo. Williams’s investment far outweighed Glass’s, so Williams became the company’s chief executive officer (CEO). He secured even more funding from outside Williams played a crucial role in Twitter’s early history.

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investors, and by 2005, a small team of web developers, as well as Biz Stone, a friend of Williams from Google, were trying to get Odeo off the ground. As the year wore on, it became clear Odeo wasn’t going to work. No one except Glass was interested in podcasting, which meant there was little enthusiasm in the office to make the product work. The final blow to Odeo’s future was computer company Apple’s June 2005 announcement about integrating a podcast service into its popular music program, iTunes. The Odeo team knew they couldn’t compete with Apple. Williams didn’t know what to do. Continuing work on Odeo seemed pointless, but he didn’t want to let down the company’s investors. The team started brainstorming Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ideas for a new product. Web developer Jack Dorsey had been kicking around the idea of a status-message application for a few years. In the mid-2000s, status messages—or away messages, as they were sometimes called—were popular on AOL Instant Messenger and blogging website LiveJournal. People posted brief descriptions about where they were, what they were doing, and even what kind of music they were listening to. The app Dorsey envisioned wasn’t

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KEY PLAYERS

EVAN WILLIAMS

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Evan Williams, known as Ev to his friends, was born in Clarks, Nebraska. While growing up, he had little interest in staying on the family’s soybean farm. He was more interested in making plastic models and dreaming up video games. After a year and a half at the University of Nebraska, he dropped out and drove to Florida to work in advertising. A string of marketing jobs in different cities brought him to San Francisco in 1997. Williams was 25 and deeply interested in the internet, which was gaining traction in nearby Silicon Valley. Self-taught in computer programming, he eventually landed jobs at Intel and Hewlett-Packard before starting Pyra Labs with a group of friends. As they built software designed to increase workplace productivity, Williams began dabbling with a side project. It was a web diary for team communication. That side project turned into Blogger, which Williams sold to Google in 2003. After leaving the day-to-day operations of Twitter in 2010, Williams founded Medium, a digital media company focused on providing premium written content. As of 2017, he remained the largest shareholder of Twitter. In July 2018, his individual net worth was estimated at $2.3 billion. 1

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Williams continued to serve on Twitter’s board of directors after leaving his CEO position.

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confined to a website or an instant messaging service. He wanted people to be able to send their updates using cell phones, via Short Message Service (SMS), more commonly known as texting. In 2005, texting was far less common than it would become by the late 2010s, but it was gaining popularity in Silicon Valley, the hub of tech start-ups near San Francisco, California. Dorsey envisioned users texting their updates to the site, where they could be accessed by computer. Messages would also be sent directly to one’s followers via text. Dorsey shared his idea with Glass, who brought it to the rest of the Odeo leadership team in early 2006. Stone and Williams were on board immediately. Dorsey, Stone, and a programmer named Florian Weber were given two Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

weeks to make a demo version of the product. Glass, meanwhile, scoured the dictionary for the perfect name.

HELLO, TWITTER The word twitter is usually used to describe light, fast chirping sounds made by birds. But it can also refer to agitation or excitement. Dorsey, Glass, Williams, and Stone certainly were excited about their new product, which they initially named Twttr. Dorsey sent the site’s

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KEY PLAYERS

CHRISTOPHER “BIZ” STONE

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Christopher “Biz” Stone grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. After dropping out of two universities, he began his career as a graphic designer for a major publishing company. In 1999, he cofounded Xanga, a blogging platform and community. Long a fan of Evan Williams’s work, Stone joined the Blogger team at Google in 2003, then followed Williams to Odeo in 2005. As creative director of Twitter, he cultivated the site’s public appearance and the company’s internal branding and values. Stone left Twitter in 2011. He worked with Williams at Williams’s start-up incubator, Obvious Corporation, which led to the founding of Jelly, a Q&A search engine, in 2014. Stone sold Jelly to Pinterest in March 2017, then returned to Twitter two months later at the request of CEO Jack Dorsey. Stone’s “top focus” at the company remains “guid[ing] the company culture, that energy, that feeling.” By his own account, he is filling the “Biz shaped hole” that remained when he left the site in 2011. 2

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Upon Stone’s return to Twitter in 2017, Dorsey tweeted, “Excited to have Biz’s energy and heart back at Twitter! #BizIsBack.”

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first official status update on March 21, 2006, at 11:50 a.m.:

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TWTTR BECOMES TWITTER Twitter has always been called “Twitter,” but it hasn’t always been spelled that way. After the company’s four founders agreed on the name in 2006, they discovered the domain www.twitter.com was already owned by a bird enthusiast. So they decided to hop onto the vowel-removing trend made popular by sites such as Flickr, Scribd, and Tumblr. “Twttr” was also five characters long, which meant users could use a special five-digit phone number to text messages to the site. Most importantly, the domain name was available. The original spelling and domain lasted only six months. By then the founders were confident the site would be a success, so they purchased www.twitter.com from the previous owner.

“just setting up my twttr.” 3 Though the broad strokes of the application were coming together, the four founders had very different ideas about how it should look and function. For example, Dorsey wanted users’ posts to be temporary. When a new post was created, the previous one would be deleted forever. Williams disagreed. Influenced by his blogging days, he advocated a stream format that would show a person’s updates in order from most to least recent.

Disagreements over details are common in any business start-up situation. But Dorsey and Williams butted heads over just about everything. Their constant clashes were caused by a much bigger problem: they couldn’t agree on the purpose of the site. Dorsey’s vision

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for Twitter was for users to have a place to talk about themselves and what they were

WHY 140 CHARACTERS?

doing. Williams viewed Twitter

Until September 2017, Twitter capped the character count of individual tweets at 140 letters, spaces, and symbols. This wasn’t just some random number picked out of the air. Twitter was created for use via SMS messaging, or texting. SMS messages are confined to a maximum of 160 characters per message. Anything beyond that is sent as a separate message. To make sure users’ tweets came through as one message, founder Jack Dorsey suggested limiting tweets to 140 characters. That left 20 characters for usernames, which appear at the beginning of the message.

as a “mini blogging product” that allowed users to share thoughts and interact with one another. 4 For him, Twitter was a place of conversation and contemplation about the larger world. Nerves and relationships frayed as work on the site continued. Glass, who had been Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

an early and avid proponent of Twitter, was let go from the company around the time of Twitter’s public launch in July 2006 due to personality conflicts with the rest of the team. Dorsey led the development team while Williams handled the investors, who weren’t very interested in Twitter. Williams used $5 million of his own money to buy them out and formed Obvious Corporation, under which he hoped to nurture other start-ups similar to Twitter. 5

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Twitter’s employees loved

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the product, as did their friends SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST

in the tech world of Silicon

South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual ten-day festival in Austin, Texas, featuring innovative films, music, and interactive technologies. Founded in 1987, SXSW began as a conference about the regional music scene. The interactive component, which encompasses everything from computers to video games to virtual reality, was added in 1994. Dozens of revolutionary technologies and websites have been demonstrated to a wide audience at SXSW, including CD-ROMs (1996), MP3s (1999), blogging (2001), Google (2001), Craigslist (2006), and Facebook (2008). Filled with concerts, film debuts, and networking opportunities, SXSW continues to be a favorite destination for entertainment and tech insiders alike.

Valley. But few other people understood Twitter’s purpose or why they would even want to use it. Initial sign-ups were slow. By October 2006, Twitter had fewer than 5,000 users. 6 That all changed in March 2007 at the annual South by Southwest (SXSW ) festival in Austin, Texas. The Twitter team set up a large TV screen in the convention hall that displayed tweets in real time. Twitter was soon the talk of the conference as thousands of new users signed up so they could see

their names and messages scroll across the screen. At the end of the festival, Twitter was awarded the prize for the best new start-up. Twitter had finally found its audience.

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With its link between art and technology, SXSW was a natural place for Twitter to find an audience.

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CHAPTER THREE

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TWITTER GOES MAINSTREAM

T

witter’s success at SXSW launched the site into a period of exponential growth. In the summer of 2007, a little less than a year

after Twitter’s public rollout, the site had 250,000 users. 1 A year and a half later, six million people worldwide were using the site at least once per month. That number tripled to 18 million monthly users by the end of 2009. 2

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GROWING PAINS Twitter’s founders were energized by the site’s rapid growth, but the small crew of developers and other employees were overwhelmed. The site, which had essentially been built in two weeks, wasn’t designed to accommodate so many users. Posts never made it onto the site, entire accounts disappeared, and the servers crashed. When one part of the site failed, all of

Twitter exploded after its use at SXSW in 2007, and it continued to have a presence at the event in later years.

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Twitter came with it. Outages, FAIL WHALE

which lasted from a few hours

Twitter’s early years were plagued by site failures and outages. Users were understandably frustrated. For the first year or so, a series of funny cat images would pop up with every error message. Cofounder Biz Stone, whose primary job was cultivating Twitter’s public image, decided they needed something a little more grown up. After scouring stock image websites, he found an illustration of a whale being lifted by a flock of birds. Australian artist Yiying Lu titled the piece “Lifting a Dreamer,” but Twitter users quickly renamed it the Fail Whale. A much-loved icon by the Twitter community, it provided a little bit of levity when users were most annoyed. The Fail Whale was retired in 2013 after the site became reliably stable.

to entire days, were rampant. Media coverage of the outages led to even more new users, who were curious about the website causing such a fuss. Though Twitter’s user base was growing, the company wasn’t making any money. Twitter is a free service for users, but it cost the company itself a lot of money to run. In addition to employee salaries and the cost of business supplies such as computers, servers, and office furniture, Twitter also had to pay the SMS

fees for every tweet sent and received on a cell phone. For Twitter’s first few years, these costs were covered by money from investors. But investments aren’t a gift. They’re a long-term money-making strategy. Eventually, the company’s investors would want to see a return on their investment.

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Twitter faces stiff competition from a variety of other social networking services.

Twitter’s management team knew this, but they were too busy holding everything together to even worry about a feasible business model. The relationship between Dorsey, who served as Twitter’s first CEO, and Williams, the majority shareholder of the company, began deteriorating rapidly. Dorsey didn’t have the skills and experience necessary to be a successful CEO, and Williams was worried about his investment. In October

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2008, Twitter’s board of directors voted to make Williams CEO instead, though Dorsey remained on the board. Two years later, during which the site failed to make any money, Williams found himself in the same position. He was replaced as CEO in October 2010 by his friend and Twitter’s first chief operating officer, Dick Costolo.

TWITTER GROWS UP The day-to-day operations of Twitter went through a complete overhaul after Costolo’s ascension to the role of CEO. Gone was the casual start-up vibe and indecisive management team. Twitter was a growing company poised for greatness, and Costolo intended to run it like one. His first order of business, in addition to bringing Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Dorsey back into the office, was the expansion of Twitter’s first revenue stream: advertising. The program was in its infancy when Costolo took over in 2010. Between then and his departure in July 2015, Twitter’s revenue went from $0 to $2 billion per year. 3 Costolo also oversaw the expansion of Twitter’s workforce from about 300 employees to more than 4,000 stationed around the globe and ordered a complete rebuild of the Twitter website to ensure the application would remain stable as the user base grew. 4

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Costolo oversaw major growth in Twitter’s user count, revenue, and workforce.

Costolo’s successes weren’t enough to make investors Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

want to keep him around. Despite the site’s rising revenue, its spending was higher still. This meant the company was losing money. Even worse to investors was the sluggish user growth. Millions of people were still joining Twitter each year, but large numbers were leaving, too. In terms of user growth and retention, Twitter was losing out to Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Twitter became a publicly traded company in November 2013. That meant the days of answering to just a few investors were over. Now anyone could invest

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in Twitter. Financial analysts and industry insiders were suddenly keeping a sharp eye on the company’s growth. If they didn’t like what they saw, they could lower the value of the company, which puts investors at risk of losing the money they previously put into Twitter. That’s exactly what happened at the beginning of 2014. Investors lost faith in Costolo, and he eventually resigned in 2015.

BACK TO JACK Costolo was replaced by Dorsey as interim CEO. Dorsey became the official CEO in October 2015. Dorsey was tasked with turning Twitter around. No longer the new and exciting app on the block, the service was losing users. Many people simply weren’t interested in Twitter Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

anymore. Others were put off by the often negative and inflammatory level of discourse. High-profile users, including British actor Stephen Fry and news anchor Megyn Kelly, left the platform because of the hateful messages they received. Dorsey and the rest of Twitter’s leadership are constantly looking for innovative ways to entice new and old users back to the site, including hosting conversations around live events, reorganizing personal Twitter feeds, and even expanding Twitter’s hallmark 140-character limit

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KEY PLAYERS

JACK DORSEY Saint Louis, Missouri, native Jack Dorsey taught himself how to code when he was 11. By age 20, he was hacking into corporate websites. The owners of one of these sites, a bike messenger dispatch service in New York City, offered him a job. Dorsey accepted and left the University of Missouri-Rolla before his senior year. A few years later, he left New York University a semester short of graduation to start a web-based dispatch firm of his own in San Francisco. It didn’t work out.

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Dorsey returned to Saint Louis only to give San Francisco another shot three years later in 2005. At first, he worked on coding jobs at night and babysat during the day. After a chance encounter with Evan Williams at a local coffee shop, Dorsey became a freelance programmer for Odeo. Dorsey remained on Twitter’s board of directors following his dismissal as CEO in 2008. Not long after leaving Twitter, he and a friend cofounded Square, a hugely successful mobile payment service company. Dorsey has juggled CEO duties for both companies since 2015, when he was brought back to Twitter to replace former CEO Dick Costolo. As of July 2018, Dorsey’s net worth is estimated at $5.3 billion. 5

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The offices of Square and Twitter are near each other, allowing Dorsey to easily walk between them when needed.

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to 280. In a 2016 interview,

Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Dorsey said he believes 280 CHARACTERS

the key to Twitter’s future

Twitter’s original 140-character limit for individual tweets was dictated by the service’s beginnings as an SMS messaging product. But as more and more phones became connected to the internet, fewer people were posting their messages via SMS. More importantly to Twitter’s executives, many users who tweeted in English found the 140-character limit too confining. People who have more room to write—such as those who tweet in Chinese or Japanese, where one character represents an entire word— tweet more often. People who tweet frequently are more likely to remain active users. For this reason, the company doubled the character limit to 280 in September 2017.

success is what the company has struggled with from the very beginning: defining exactly what Twitter is. A 2016 advertising campaign spelled it out for current and potential users: “What’s happening? What’s everyone talking about? What’s trending?” 6 It’s hard to tell whether this strategy is working. Active monthly user numbers crept to 330 million by the end of 2017, which is a far cry from Facebook’s 2.1 billion

and even Instagram’s 800 million. 7 But from a business standpoint, there was hope on the horizon. After 11 years of existence, Twitter reported its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2017. As of March 2018, the company was valued at $25 billion. 8

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TWITTER’S USER COUNT9 350

MILLIONS OF USERS

300 250 200 150 100 50 0 17

20

15

16

20

20

14

20

12

13

20

20

11

20

09

10

20

20

08

20

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Twitter’s user count exploded in the service’s early years, though it eventually began to level off in the mid-2010s.

Twitter may not be the most popular social media destination, but it has undoubtedly changed the way people share and receive information. Even people who aren’t registered users find themselves affected by its existence. It is where news stories break and revolutions start, where world leaders bicker and social issues are debated. It’s the place people go to find out what’s happening right now.

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CHAPTER FOUR

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THE THREE TIERS OF TWITTER USE

T

witter isn’t just a website or a mobile application. Since the very beginning, its founders have always viewed it as a tool.

Like a Swiss Army knife, it has several purposes and capabilities. These fall into three categories: viewing, sharing, and connecting.

VIEWING For many people, Twitter serves as the front

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page of the internet. Depending on which accounts a person follows, one can instantly catch up with everything going on in the world: earthquakes, plane crashes, movie reviews, celebrity engagements and breakups, and even covert military operations. Tweets are short, and it’s easy to scan through one’s feed to get a sense of the news of the day. That news may be underreported, incomplete, or even Many people on Twitter never tweet themselves, instead using Twitter to follow celebrities, politics, and other topics.

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incorrect, but for many Twitter users, it’s a starting place STIFF COMPETITION

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Few competitors in the social status-message business could withstand the force of Twitter. The first to be pushed aside was Dodgeball, which utilized SMS technology to tell friends about a user’s location. Unlike Twitter, no messages were exchanged. Its purpose was to help people locate their friends to hang out. Although popular in certain circles, Dodgeball never broke 100,000 users. 2 It was purchased by Google in 2005 and folded into another product that was canceled in 2013. Parlio was created in late 2015 as a space for civil discourse on the internet. The civility aspect is what separated it from Twitter, where many discussions devolve into name-calling and other insults. But Parlio ultimately never took off. Cofounder Emily Parker attributes the site’s failure to the human desire to “go viral” and gain attention. 3 Parlio’s small, closed community wasn’t conducive to that. The service merged with Quora, a question-and-answer site, in 2016.

for digging deeper into the events and ideas one finds most interesting. A 2014 study by analytics firm Twopcharts indicates only 23 percent of Twitter’s 974 million existing accounts were “active” users of the site, meaning they tweeted at least once every 30 days. 1 Twitter is notorious for its user turnover—millions of people create accounts only to abandon them days or months later. But what this study doesn’t take into account is the number of people reading their Twitter feeds without ever posting. Twitter doesn’t release usage data, so industry analysts can only guess how many people use Twitter like

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a newspaper, television, or other one-sided news source. But they are certainly out there, especially during times of political strife, such as the Arab Spring of 2011 or the investigation about alleged ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Twitter is a front-row seat for major news events down the street and around the world.

SHARING Twitter was initially started as a Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

vehicle for sharing information. Dorsey wanted to use it to tell his friends what he was doing at any given moment. Williams thought it should be used to show friends and acquaintances what was going on in every user’s part of the world. They were actually both right. Twitter has become a

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FROM TWITTERING TO TWEETING Since 2007, messages posted on Twitter have been known as “tweets.” Like many aspects of Twitter’s user experience, that language came directly from the people using the service. Twitter’s founders and employees knew users were talking about “tweets” and “tweeting” from the very beginning, but they continued to use their own terminology—”updates” and “Twittering”—until 2009. That was intentional. Stone wanted users to feel ownership of the words they used to describe their activities on Twitter. He was concerned an official endorsement of “tweets” and “tweeting” would suddenly make the words uncool, like when parents rave about a teenager’s favorite band. Not adopting “tweet” early on in Twitter’s existence ended up being a major mistake. When the company tried to copyright “tweet” years later, there was no evidence of its internal use during the site’s early years, and the copyright application was denied.

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place to share anything and everything, from hard-hitting news to pictures of meals to pithy one-liners and jokes. It is up to the user to decide how he or she wants to use Twitter and what content he or she wishes to share. Sharing on Twitter doesn’t necessarily mean posting personal photos or family anecdotes. A lot of the sharing that occurs on the site is the passing along of interesting articles, interviews, and tweets. The easiest way to do that is by reposting, or retweeting, something someone else already posted. Some people retweet others’ posts exactly as they are, while others add their own comments. Approximately six percent of tweets are retweeted. 4 That seems like a small number, but it represents millions of messages. By the end of 2018, approximately 500 million Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

tweets were being sent every day. 5 At a 6 percent retweet rate, that means 30 million of each day’s tweets are retweets. Retweets are how news spreads quickly. Imagine a Twitter user who follows only her favorite singers and actors. She logs onto her Twitter feed and sees a news story about a tsunami in Japan. The original tweet was posted by the Associated Press. The Twitter user doesn’t follow the Associated Press on Twitter, but she follows a

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Stories and images from newsworthy events, such as the 2009 landing of an airliner in New York’s Hudson River, can rapidly spread around the globe through tweets and retweets.

Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

musician who retweeted the news agency’s tweet. That’s how information moves beyond one’s list of followers. Retweets were not originally a built-in feature of Twitter. Users created the concept, putting the letters RT before a copied tweet. The idea became so popular that Twitter eventually added an official retweet feature, letting people retweet with a single click.

CONNECTING Only one of Twitter’s cofounders envisioned Twitter being used as a means of connecting with others. Glass, who

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was ultimately pushed out

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TWITTER AND THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS In 2010, the Library of Congress announced it had formed a partnership with Twitter to catalog every public tweet ever sent. It was an ambitious undertaking. The hope was to provide a database for scholarly research, allowing researchers to study how people around the world reacted during a specific event or even how language changes over time. When the project started, Twitter users were tweeting about 50 million times a day. 6 By the end of 2017, that number had grown to 500 million. 7 The never-ending stream of data was unwieldy, and no one could figure out how to sort and catalog it. To prevent this problem from getting worse, the Library of Congress stopped collecting every tweet in December 2017. It decided to focus instead on situationally significant tweets, such as those from world leaders or those surrounding an important issue or event.

of the company before the service launched, envisioned Twitter as an antidote to the loneliness of the digital world. Instead of just posting opinions and aiming them at no one in particular, people would form relationships and bond over shared interests and beliefs. There’s a place for every person and every interest on Twitter. Those who want to find people who knit can type in “#knitting.” Those who need something new to read can look for “#BookRecommendations.” People interested in news, politics, celebrity gossip and culture, local events, and specific social issues can

all find relevant Twitter accounts with a few clicks of a keyboard. Twitter’s 330 million active users seem like a

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Groups of people who connect on Twitter sometimes meet up in real life at events known as tweetups.

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much smaller group when a #HASHTAGS

user chooses to follow only

Many of Twitter’s functions were created by Twitter users themselves. That’s the case with the pound sign (#), or, as it’s more commonly known online, the hashtag. When Twitter began, users didn’t have an easy way to find people with similar interests. In August 2007, just a few months after Twitter’s debut at South by Southwest, user Chris Messina suggested using the pound sign to help categorize messages. The symbol was already being used in other messaging systems. It was also easy to use on a cell phone keypad. Another user named the symbol hashtag, and use of # began to spread. Twitter began hyperlinking hashtags to one another in 2009. If a user clicks on #cooking, he or she will see a feed populated entirely with tweets that also mention #cooking.

those with specific hobbies and interests. Perhaps the most important way people are connecting on Twitter is by replying to other people’s tweets. Typing the @ symbol before a user’s name will notify the user that a message has been directed toward him or her while still allowing other people to read it. What happens next is up to the person who receives the message. Sometimes he or she will read it without providing a reply. But in many cases the user will send back a message.

This can lead to a conversation between two people or a group. Twitter helps friendships form between people on different sides of the world while also deepening relationships between people who know each other off-line. There are even instances of people meeting on

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Twitter, developing a close relationship online and off-line,

WHERE IT’S @

then marrying one another.

The “at” symbol (@) is an example of early Twitter users’ influence over the site. On November 2, 2006, Robert Anderson, a designer at Apple, used the @ symbol to reply to a tweet from his brother. The symbol was common in tech circles. Other users followed suit and began using the @ symbol followed by a user’s screen name to show they were responding directly to that person. Like the hashtag, the use of the @ symbol became so popular that Twitter programmers eventually hyperlinked usernames connected to the @ symbol back to individual users’ accounts.

Happy endings like that are the exception rather than the rule, but they help illustrate the power of personal connections in a digital space. Twitter has changed how users communicate and who they communicate with, shrinking the distance between users one

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tweet at a time.

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Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER FIVE

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BUILDING BRANDS WITH TWITTER

T

witter isn’t just a place for people to interact with other people. It’s also a place where brands connect with consumers.

This can be done through paid advertising or through public relations efforts. Celebrities, who try to cultivate their own personal brands, can also use the service to connect with their fans.

Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

PAID ADVERTISING In 2018, advertisers had three options for purchasing advertisements on Twitter: Promoted Accounts, Promoted Tweets, and Promoted Trends. They’re exactly what they sound like. Advertisers pay to have their accounts, tweets, or trending topics placed in front of users who fit a certain profile based on age, gender, location, or even interests. Every sponsored account, tweet, Actor Ashton Kutcher was one of the earliest major celebrities to embrace Twitter.

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or trend is labeled with the GOING VIRAL

word promoted, which tells

For many brand managers— company employees who help shape the image of a particular brand or product— the pinnacle of achievement on social media is going viral. Based on the concept of medical viruses, going viral online means one’s image, video, or text post spreads rapidly from person to person. Whereas medical viruses may spread through personal contact, going viral on the internet is caused by retweets and shares. Posts are more likely to go viral if they are funny or shocking, are endorsed by or feature a celebrity, or connect to current events.

users they’re looking at an advertisement. Beyond that there’s little visible difference between promoted content and the content that occurs naturally on the site. Brands interested in gaining more followers are likely to advertise via Promoted Accounts. The brand, such as a soft drink manufacturer or automobile company, shows up

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in the “Who to follow” feature on the side of the user’s Twitter feed. The advertiser pays Twitter for every time a user clicks on the Follow button. Prices per follow start in the $2.50–$3.50 range. 1 Brands who opt for promoting individual tweets are usually trying to get viewers to take a certain action, like enter a contest or go to the brand’s website. Promoted tweets can also include photos, illustrations, and video, just like regular tweets, which can make them more engaging. The cost of a Promoted Tweet can be based on how many

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TWITTER’S REVENUE2 800

QUARTER 1

700

QUARTER 2

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MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

600

QUARTER 3 QUARTER 4

500

400

300

200

100

0 2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

As Twitter refined its advertising offerings and boosted its user count, the company was able to increase its revenue significantly.

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users engage with the advertisement or simply how many users see it. Promoted Trends work in much the same way. When a user clicks on a Promoted Trend in the Trends sidebar, all tweets about that trend are displayed, as well as a Promoted Tweet from the trend’s sponsor.

PUBLIC RELATIONS Many companies have found success on Twitter without spending money on paid advertising. Wendy’s, Southwest Airlines, the Seattle Mariners, Coca-Cola, and thousands more businesses use a free Twitter account to promote their product. More importantly, they use Twitter to connect with their consumers. Behind every brand’s Twitter account is a person Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

or team charged with handling customer complaints, comments, and queries while maintaining the brand’s image and messaging. This can be anything from an airline handling a user’s missed flight connection to a baseball team bantering about yesterday’s big game. Responding to an individual Twitter user makes that user feel special, which builds brand loyalty. That is the ultimate goal of advertising on Twitter. A company doesn’t just want to ensure consumers know the brand’s

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name and what it sells—they want the consumer to buy the product. Part of obtaining and maintaining brand loyalty is establishing what the brand is and what it stands for. According to a 2017 study by Sprout Social, two-thirds of consumers think it’s important to know where brands stand on certain political and social issues. 3 Using products and services that align with Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

one’s values makes people feel good about themselves. That’s why companies that use Twitter often do so to take a stand on various social

RETWEETS AND CHICKEN NUGGETS In April 2017, Twitter user Carter Wilkerson sent a public message to the Twitter account of fast-food chain Wendy’s: “Yo @Wendys how many retweets for a year of free chicken nuggets?” Wendy’s social media handler replied, “18 million.” Undaunted, Wilkerson retweeted the message to his followers in his quest for free food. Within 35 days, #NuggsForCarter had 3.42 million retweets, breaking the record for the most retweeted tweet of all time. Even though he didn’t end up hitting 18 million, Wilkerson got the nuggets, as well as a $100,000 donation in his name to a charity affiliated with Wendy’s, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. 4 But marketing analysts think Wendy’s actually got the better end of the deal. The brand’s public engagement with Wilkerson is publicity that can’t be purchased.

issues. For example, in January 2018, Airbnb, a service that facilitates the rental of private homes for vacations, started a campaign called #WeAccept. The campaign is about the brand’s commitment to people of all races

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Sending customer complaints via Twitter can often result in a quicker response than trying to contact a large corporation in other ways.

and nationalities. It’s an admirable message, but it’s also a strategic marketing tactic. Airbnb hopes people who identify with those same values will remember Airbnb the next time they need travel accommodations. A Twitter presence also allows brands to solicit customer feedback. In addition to handling complaints, they can answer customers’ questions about products or services. They can also poll their followers about current offerings and what customers would like to see in the

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future. Many companies use Twitter by searching for their brand’s name to see what people are saying about it. All this feedback affects how brands present themselves to customers in the future.

CELEBRITY OUTREACH The term brand isn’t used just when talking about products and services. It can also refer to people. Actors, writers, musicians, comedians, politicians, athletes, and even Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

scientists all have a certain image they present to the public. One way to maintain that image is through social media. Social media gives celebrities a direct connection to their audience. They don’t have to wait around for a

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WHAT’S IN A NAME? There aren’t any restrictions on usernames and display names Twitter users can choose. That can lead to confusion when someone uses the name of a famous person or organization as a means of impersonation or parody. For example, there are several accounts on Twitter that use Barack Obama’s name: @ThePresObama, @ObamaNews, @FansOfObama, and even @TeamBarackObama. None of those accounts actually belong to Barack Obama, who tweets from @BarackObama. The key to telling which one is the real Barack Obama is the tiny blue circle with a white checkmark between his display name (Barack Obama) and his username (@BarackObama). That badge indicates Twitter employees have verified that the real Barack Obama uses that account. Verification doesn’t mean one user is more important or special than another. Its purpose is to protect other users from scams and misinformation.

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magazine or blog to publish a flattering photo—they can do it themselves. Twitter is also a good way for celebrities to interact with fans from all over the world. Some share photos and stories about their regular lives offstage. Others answer questions from fans or promote social causes and charities they support. Basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal has been known to use Twitter to announce surprise meet-and-greet opportunities. Lady Gaga tweets teasers about her upcoming projects and posts photos of her creative process. Scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson uses his Twitter account to promote his books and television appearances while also sharing articles and facts about math and science. A celebrity’s presence on Twitter can Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

make him or her seem more relatable, which is often endearing to the celebrity’s audience. But just because a celebrity’s name is on a Twitter account doesn’t mean the celebrity is actually writing the messages. Many rely on managers, personal assistants, or even interns to write and send tweets. This is especially evident when celebrities tweet about a particular product, such as a cell phone or a brand of makeup. The celebrity

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TOP 10 TWITTER USERS, JUNE 20185 120

101.4

83.3 76.4

76

ELLEN DEGENERES, COMEDIAN

LADY GAGA, MUSICAL ARTIST

TAYLOR SWIFT, MUSICAL ARTIST

0

RIHANNA, MUSICAL ARTIST

20

BARACK OBAMA, 44TH PRESIDENT

40

JUSTIN BIEBER, MUSICAL ARTIST

60

73.5

70.4 64.2

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, MUSICAL ARTIST

80

KATY PERRY, MUSICAL ARTIST

FOLLOWER COUNT IN MILLIONS

Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

86.7

YOUTUBE, ONLINE VIDEO SERVICE

104

100

CRISTIANO RONALDO, SOCCER PLAYER

106.7

Twitter’s top users tend to be celebrities who are already popular outside the context of the social media service, though a popular Twitter account can boost a celebrity’s profile even more.

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By the summer of 2018, singer Katy Perry was the world’s most-followed Twitter user.

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is paid to endorse the product with his or her name and face, but somebody else writes the tweet. Endorsing products on Twitter is big business, and it’s not always easy to tell when a celebrity has been paid to post something. One example can be seen in comedian Ellen DeGeneres’s celebrity-filled selfie at the 2014 Oscars. With more than 2.6 million retweets, the photo earned the record for most retweeted post at the time. 6 But it turned out that viral moment was actually a paid advertisement for Samsung, which provided the phone DeGeneres used. Though the moment the photo captured was unplanned, the use of the phone and the post on Twitter were all

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planned out.

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CHAPTER SIX

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TWITTER’S INFLUENCE ON NEWS MEDIA

T

raditional news outlets, such as newspapers, magazines, and television and radio news programs, have struggled

with the changing media landscape since the introduction of the internet into homes and businesses in the mid-1990s. By 1998, 20 percent of Americans were getting their news online instead of through traditional media sources. 1

Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

By the time traditional media finally figured out how to present news to an online audience—and make money from it—a new online news vehicle had been introduced: Twitter. For many news outlets, it’s both a blessing and a curse.

Journalist John Dickerson filed reports via Twitter during the 2008 presidential campaign.

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PROTO-TWITTER

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When Dorsey was a kid, he coupled his father’s citizens band (CB) radio—usually used for listening to radio signals from barges floating down the Mississippi River—with a police scanner. Though bored by the conversations over the radio, he was fascinated by the police scanner. He realized the information exchanged over the emergency airwaves gave a complete picture of what was happening in Saint Louis at that very minute—where fire trucks were, where police cars were going, and what ambulances were doing. Dorsey wanted to chart that information. When he was a young teenager, he used Washington University’s computer network to tap into the internet, which was still in its infancy. He taught himself how to code by watching programmers trade tips online, then wrote a program that simulated the movements detailed by the police scanner. He says that was the start of his interest in converting the physical world into something virtual.

SHARING AND SOURCING NEWS ON TWITTER Twitter has completely changed the way people learn about news and events. Prior to its widespread use, reporting a breaking news story looked something like this: A reporter or editor hears about the news from a source. The reporter interviews that person and any others who might have information about the subject of the story, usually by phone or an in-person interview. The reporter writes the article and then gives it to the editor, who edits it. The fact-checker then double-checks that everything in the article is correct. The article then moves

to the production department to either be printed in a newspaper or magazine or posted on the internet.

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Depending on whether the story is printed on actual paper, this entire process can take anywhere from a few hours to an entire day. On Twitter, breaking news happens in one of two ways: A source has breaking news, which he or she then tweets. Or, a source tells a reporter the breaking news, and then the reporter tweets it. Twitter has made it possible for anyone to share news almost as soon as it happens. People don’t have to wait for tomorrow morning’s Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

newspaper to read about a blizzard in the northeastern United States. They can read Twitter updates from people experiencing the blizzard in real time. Some of those people are professional reporters, but many more are people simply sharing their experiences with

BREAKING THE BIGGEST STORY OF 2011 On the evening of May 1, 2011, a few high-profile journalists around the country received a three-word email from the White House: “Get to work.” 2 A big story was on its way, but no one knew what it was. Rumors began flying on Twitter. At 10:25 p.m. EST, Keith Urbahn, chief of staff for former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, confirmed what many had been speculating: Osama bin Laden was dead. Urbahn pointed out in subsequent tweets that he didn’t have full confirmation yet, but that mattered little to those on Twitter. By the time President Obama announced the death of the architect of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in a live broadcast an hour later, the news was already plastered all over the internet. According to Twitter, more than 4,000 tweets were sent each second of Obama’s nine-minute, 18-second speech. 3

their Twitter followers. With a

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Twitter account and a cell phone camera, anyone can be a reporter. Professional reporters also use Twitter as a source for news. Many log onto Twitter multiple times per day to check what is going on in the rest of the world and close to home. Tips from followers or other news organizations might lead to the next big story. Twitter is also helpful in locating sources for stories. In an era when it’s increasingly hard to reach people—especially teenagers and young adults—by telephone, reporters search out experts and potential interviewees on Twitter and other social media channels. Once contact is made, they can communicate online or arrange for a more personal meeting. Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

For some media outlets, particularly cable news television stations such as Fox News and MSNBC, tweets don’t just help share the news—they are the news. These 24-hour news stations have a lot of airtime to fill. It isn’t unusual for them to devote an entire segment to a tweet from a government official or cultural figure. News anchors and analysts speculate what the tweet means and how it will affect the public.

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Tweets from prominent politicians, such as President Trump, can become top stories on news channels or websites.

RISKS OF FAKE NEWS Troublingly, the content of tweets covered and sent out by news organizations isn’t always true. Just because news spreads fast on Twitter doesn’t mean it’s credible. Unlike traditional news outlets, Twitter doesn’t employ fact-checkers on staff to make sure posts are factually correct. Sometimes people post something they think is true, but it turns out to be a rumor or hearsay. Other times people purposefully post lies just to get a reaction

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.

THE ECHO CHAMBER

out of others. It can be very

Twitter isn’t always the best source for news and information. In addition to allowing people to post almost whatever they want, factual or not, Twitter falls prey to the echo chamber effect. Twitter was designed to let people follow anyone’s posts, but a 2017 study from the United Kingdom indicates Twitter users generally follow people whose political and social views align with theirs. That means the information they receive and share on Twitter is biased, or skewed, to their own beliefs. For example, a person who supports the current presidential administration might see only positive stories about the president and his or her cabinet on Twitter. A person who opposes the administration might see only negative stories. Neither user gets the full picture of how the administration is performing.

hard to determine which posts on Twitter are true and which aren’t, especially when news outlets are rushing to be the first to share the story. False news stories are a major problem on the internet, especially Twitter. According to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT ) study conducted from 2006 to 2017, “false news stories are 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true stories.” 4 False news also travels six times faster than real news. The study’s authors believe this is

because false news is usually more interesting than the real story. They think it may also be related to the human desire to be perceived as an expert about certain topics. False news is particularly prevalent during natural disasters and national tragedies. One example is the

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Mistruths, whether intentional or unintentional, can spread rapidly around the globe via social media, typically at a much faster pace than later corrections.

mass shooting during a concert in Las Vegas, Nevada, in October 2017. Within hours of the event, during which 58 people died and 500 more were injured, multiple Twitter users were spreading incorrect information about the shooter, including his political and religious affiliations and his reasons for conducting the massacre. 5 This misinformation jeopardized the safety of the man falsely accused of the shooting and made people question whether the actual facts behind the event were true.

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CHANGING THE RULES OF THE GAME In the past, news organizations were focused on breaking news stories before their competitors. That’s how they got readers and viewers. Publications and programs LIVE-TWEETING THE NEWS

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Broadcast television has traditionally held the upper hand over print media when it comes to breaking news. TV journalists could report live from riots or natural disasters, whereas print journalists had to wait for their stories to be published the next day or, in the age of the internet, at least a few hours later. Twitter has changed that formula. Now any reporter can live-tweet from the scene of a breaking news story. They share what’s going on in real time, including their impressions of the scene and interviews with witnesses and local officials, in 280-character chunks. They can even report live from places where they can’t use their own cameras, such as trials, political debates, sporting events, and conferences. Live-tweeting allows journalists to serve as their readers’ eyes and ears as news happens.

with a large audience attract more advertisers and can charge more money for advertisements, which makes the news organization more profitable. That model still exists, albeit in a more compacted form. In an era in which more than 50 percent of Americans get at least some of their news from social media, news organizations are racing to post information on Twitter. 6 Beyond informing the public of current events, individual media companies want to bring as many people as possible

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to their websites. That’s how they make money. But this focus on speed also needs to be balanced with the need for accuracy. Twitter has also changed the way audiences view news organizations and the people reporting for them. People wanting to read or hear the news used to choose organizations based on names or brand images, not the personalities of the reporters they employed. Twitter has changed that by allowing reporters to interact and build relationships with their readers. Instead of being tied to the image of their employer, reporters are establishing brands of their own. And instead of remaining loyal to a particular news outlet, audiences are aligning themselves with individual reporters. If a reporter with a large Twitter Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

following leaves one news organization for another, their Twitter followers will most likely go along with them. That’s great for the reporter but not so great for the former employer.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

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TWITTER’S PLACE IN POLITICS

T

witter had been around for less than a year when then senator Barack Obama sent his first tweet: “Thinking we’re only

one signature away from ending the war in Iraq. Learn more at http://www.barackobama.com.” 1

It was April 29, 2007. Two months earlier, Obama had formally announced his candidacy for the United States presidency. Instead of relying solely on traditional methods of reaching out to the American people, he turned to the fledgling Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

world of social media. Twitter was still in its infancy in 2007. With fewer than 250,000 active users worldwide, most Americans would have been hard-pressed to identify the service’s name, much less what it did. 2 But that one tweet signaled a shift in US politics. From that moment forward, Twitter

Obama sat down with Dorsey in 2011 for a question-and-answer session using Twitter.

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became a staple in political campaigns and conversations around the world.

THE OBAMA ERA Twitter grew exponentially during Obama’s eight years in office, as did the use of social media in general. This was in part due to the iPhone, which was introduced in 2007. With smartphones putting the internet in their pockets, a growing number of people suddenly had constant access to social media. Obama’s campaign capitalized on that. Before 2008, political campaigns had used the internet primarily for fund-raising. That changed with the spread of social media and online news sources. In 2008, 74 percent of internet users got at least some of their Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

information about the presidential election from online sources, including social media sites such as Twitter. 3 It was the first campaign cycle in which all presidential and congressional candidates made an effort to connect with voters through social media. Though most of that outreach took place on Facebook and Myspace, Obama maintained a steady presence on Twitter. He even announced the selection of his running mate, Joe Biden, in a tweet.

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Obama’s defeat of Republican John McCain in the general election left many conservatives dissatisfied with the ideology and leadership of the Republican Party. Shortly after he joined Twitter in September 2008, conservative Michael Patrick Leahy created a list of other conservative voices on the service. Thirty names soon grew to a 3,500-member group connected by the hashtag

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#TCOT (Top Conservatives on Twitter). This online swell of

GOVERNMENT AGENCY TWEETS Politicians aren’t the only government employees who use Twitter. Several US government agencies have their own presence on the social media site, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Education, the Justice Department, NASA, and even the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Employees of these agencies must follow certain rules about what and when they can post. These rules are compiled in guidebooks like that of the EPA, which is 29 pages long. Rules include what kind of information may be tweeted and who needs to approve the tweet before it is posted.

support brought together people from all over the nation and led to the formation of the Tea Party, a conservative, populist social and political movement, in early 2009. Not only was it the first political group to form through the use of Twitter but it was the first large-scale example of people from different physical locations coming together on the internet because of a shared ideology.

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Obama was the first president to regularly use a smartphone while in office.

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Political discourse on Twitter continued to expand throughout Obama’s presidency. Obama himself used the service during his time in office to communicate with the American public and to pressure Congress to pass legislation. As Democratic and Republican leaders flocked to the service to share their views and push their own agendas, constituents began showing their support or disdain for their activities in real time. That was the case in June 2016 when Republicans in the House of Representatives refused to vote on gun control legislation. Democratic representatives staged a sit-in and took to social media to broadcast their grievances. Within a day, the hashtags #NoBillNoBreak and #HoldTheFloor had been included in more than 1.4 million tweets from

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politicians and their constituents advocating for a vote. 4 In addition to helping spread the word about what was happening behind the closed doors of the House of Representatives, Twitter provided a platform for regular citizens to join the conversation.

THE TRUMP ERA Twitter’s role in US politics only grew with the 2016 presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Trump’s primary method of reaching

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out to voters was through Twitter, where his unfiltered, often-controversial posts dominated the news cycle. This method of communication continued during his presidency. Speaking of the mainstream media in June 2017, Trump said, “They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out.” 5 President Trump isn’t the only world leader to embrace tweeting technology. As of June 2017, 276 heads of state and government from 178 countries have some sort

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TWITTER’S TOP WORLD LEADERS Leaders around the world rely on Twitter to communicate with their constituents and opponents. As of July 2018, the most followed leader in office was President Donald Trump, with 53.3 million followers on his personal account, @RealDonaldTrump. 7 His official White House account, @POTUS, had 23.6 million followers. 8 Next was Pope Francis, with approximately 47.2 million followers spread over his nine accounts, eight of which are translations of his official account, which is in English. 9 Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is third, with 43.3 million followers. 10

of presence on Twitter. That represents 92 percent of all member states in the United Nations, an international organization that includes nearly every country. There are also 1,100 foreign ambassadors on the site. 6 With the exception of Trump, few government leaders actually manage their own Twitter accounts. That job is usually relegated to a communications staff member. But the purpose for tweeting

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is usually the same: sharing political messages with the general populace. The long-term effects of tweeting while holding political office have yet to be seen. For the time being, however, some political analysts believe Trump’s tweeting tone and his frequent use of the platform to levy threats makes the United States look weak and unstable in front of other nations. That image of instability is compounded when the president’s tweets blatantly contradict the official stance of the executive branch. For example, in January 2018, the White House publicly urged Congress to renew a National Security Agency bill. The morning of the vote, President Trump tweeted about his dislike for the bill, indicating that it shouldn’t Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

be renewed. Two hours later, after conferring with White

STAYING NEUTRAL

House staffers, he sent another

stances in real time can be

Since its early days, Twitter has adopted a policy of neutrality when it comes to political issues and events. As Stone writes in his memoir Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind, “The company might be involved in controversy, but [Twitter is] not opinionated.” 11 According to Twitter spokesman Nick Pacilio, “Twitter is an open platform for diverse political views.” 12

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tweet downplaying his original comments and championing the bill. Watching the evolution of a world leader’s political

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alarming or confusing for his or her constituents, as well

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SHOULD EVERY VOICE BE HEARD? Twitter’s “block” function allows users to prohibit certain people from seeing and commenting on their updates. It’s usually not a big deal to block someone, but it is if you’re the president of the United States. In 2017, seven people sued President Trump for blocking them on Twitter after they replied to his posts with criticisms or insults. The Knight First Amendment Institute, which represented those seven people in the lawsuit, says blocking people from commenting on the president’s Twitter feed is a violation of the users’ First Amendment free speech rights. According to Katie Fallow, a senior staff attorney for the Knight Institute, the continual blocking of dissenting voices can lead to “a kind of an echo chamber, where only voices that support the government are heard.” 14 In May 2018, the judge in the case ruled that Trump had to stop blocking people on Twitter due to the conflict with the First Amendment.

as for international allies and enemies. “Allies and opponents invest in your judgment and common sense,” says R. Nicholas Burns, a former diplomat and ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). 13 A hasty, unapproved public pronouncement has the potential to cause rifts between leaders and their nations. This is why most world leaders still prefer formal channels of communication over Twitter when it comes to establishing and maintaining international relations. Summits, telephone calls, and even letters leave less room for confusion and misinterpretation. They also give leaders the opportunity

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to build personal relationships out of the public eye (and without a character limit). That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for Twitter in international politics. Don Baer, worldwide chair and CEO of communications firm Burson-Marsteller, expects more leaders to follow Trump’s lead and communicate directly to their followers no matter where they live. The Information Age has stripped away the geographical, cultural, and even language barriers that once kept nations divided. Twitter might be a way to bring

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them together.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

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THE DARK SIDE OF TWITTER

T

witter has undoubtedly changed the way people communicate. However, those changes aren’t always for the better.

As Twitter’s user base grows, so do hoaxes, harassment, and other abusive practices.

DON’T FEED THE TROLLS It is entirely possible to maintain an anonymous profile on Twitter. The service doesn’t require

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users to validate their identities when signing up for an account, nor does Twitter show any identifying details in their usernames or display names. A lot of people choose to use their real names somewhere in their Twitter account, especially if they are trying to build up their image as an expert or celebrity. They want to be associated with what they tweet.

Twitter has had positive effects, but it also serves as a tool for cyberbullies, trolls, and other people with negative intentions.

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But there are others who use Twitter as a platform for spewing damaging and hateful rhetoric. Many of those people hide behind a cloak of anonymity. On the internet, people who purposefully post sexist material, racist comments, or other kinds of hate speech are known as trolls. Some like feeling superior to other people, while others just want to have a laugh at someone else’s expense. Anonymous trolling leaves little chance of social stigma for the attacker, and the chances of real-world consequences, such as losing one’s job or facing criminal charges, are low. Psychologists refer to this as “the online disinhibition effect.” 1 It allows people to do terrible things online that they wouldn’t normally do in real life. Yet there are some Twitter trolls who want everyone Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

to know who they are. In 2016, comedian and Saturday Night Live cast member Leslie Jones found herself the target of one such self-described troll, Milo Yiannopoulos. After Yiannopoulos published a scathingly racist and misogynistic review of the 2016 Ghostbusters film, he and a barrage of anonymous trolls began harassing Jones on Twitter. Yiannopoulos was subsequently banned from Twitter.

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THE BUSINESS OF BOTS Another problem plaguing Twitter is the use of bots. A bot is a program or application that performs an automated task. The iPhone’s voice assistant, Siri, and Amazon’s counterpart, Alexa, are both bots. Twitter bots are programs that tweet on their own. Some Twitter bots are made for fun, such as @EveryWord,

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which tweets one word every 30 minutes with the goal of eventually tweeting every word in the English language. But many bots are created to complete tasks of

GAMERGATE In 2014, the video game community found itself in the midst of a civil war that came to be known as Gamergate. Some gamers began verbally attacking prominent women in the gaming industry. Citing a supposed bias in gaming journalism, the trolls specifically targeted two women: Zoe Quinn, an independent game designer, and Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist writer and media critic. Little of the discourse on Twitter and private message boards was actually about journalism. Instead, the trolls hacked into the women’s computers and cell phones and posted private information, including addresses. The women were forced to leave their homes due to an alarming number of personal and very specific and graphic threats about their safety. People who supported Quinn and Sarkeesian also faced vicious harassment, and a few even left the gaming community altogether.

a much more questionable nature. For example, in 2018, Twitter confirmed that more than 50,000 bots linked to Russian companies, organizations, and individuals tried to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election by

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spreading messages of fear and misinformation on Twitter. 2 TWITTER AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH

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In the United States, freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Those who oppose Twitter’s policies about hate speech and threats of violence argue they are simply exercising their right of free speech. Words that are used to hurt individuals or groups, such as racial slurs or other offensive uses of language, are expressions of one’s thoughts. Freedom of speech doesn’t cover every type of speech. Defamation, obscenity, and threats aren’t covered by the First Amendment. Furthermore, the First Amendment applies only to censorship by the government. Because Twitter is a private company, it’s free to set its own rules on what constitutes appropriate content for its site. Users may not like it, but they don’t have legal recourse to get what they want.

It can be hard to tell the difference between a bot and a real Twitter user. That’s done on purpose. Twitter bots are effective only if people believe them to be actual Twitter users. That’s why the creators of such bots steal the profiles and avatars of real Twitter users and apply them to their bots. Because of this, “it can be very difficult to tell if something’s a bot,” says Gabriel Dance, a deputy investigations editor at the New York Times. 3 Humanlike bots are big business for the companies that make them. Dance and the New York Times’s investigative

team began looking into them in 2017 and zeroed in on a company called Devumi, which sells social media

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followers to companies and people looking to bolster their image. These “followers” are

TYPES OF TWITTER BOTS

simply bots set up to look like

There are three main types of bots found on Twitter. Scheduled bots post messages based on time. Watcher bots monitor other Twitter accounts or other websites. When something changes, they tweet about it. Amplification bots are designed to retweet and like tweets by certain people. Building bots doesn’t take much coding knowledge or time, which may contribute to their popularity.

real people. Devumi and other companies sell their bots to politicians, celebrities, and anyone else who wants to make themselves appear more popular in the social media sphere. At $225 for 25,000 bot followers, it’s an economical way to expand influence. 4

It’s also strictly prohibited on Twitter. Yet the New Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

York Times reported that as of January 2018, nearly 15 percent of all active Twitter accounts are run by bots. 5 The messages sent via bot can be used to try to sway political campaigns, smear reputable companies and people, and bankrupt businesses. They make individuals and ideas seem more powerful than they really are. The digital footprints of bots and their makers have very real influences in the physical world.

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HOW TWITTER PROTECTS ITS USERS Social media analysts have long been critical of Twitter’s anything goes policy when it comes to what users can post. With very few exceptions, most information, opinions, and modes of expression, ranging from the boring to the profane, are acceptable per Twitter’s terms of service. Many people, including some high-ranking Twitter officials, think the time has come for that to change. Twitter began as a way to tell people what was happening. Its founders never intended it to be used to spread messages of hate and intolerance, nor did they expect bot programs to masquerade as real users. Twitter was built to make connections, not to spread propaganda. Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

In December 2017, Twitter started to take steps to combat this use of its service. The company instituted new rules prohibiting threats of violence or physical harm by individuals or organizations on Twitter. These new policies also ban content that “glorifies violence or the perpetrators of a violent act.” 6 This includes the content of images and videos shared on the site. Users who violate these rules will have their tweets deleted. If such behavior becomes a pattern, the user will be suspended.

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Dorsey vowed in 2018 to more aggressively remove bots, trolls, and harassers from Twitter.

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Twitter employees are also HOW TO AVOID SPREADING MISINFORMATION ON TWITTER The flow of information from news and social media sites is relentless. There’s so much of it to go through that it can be hard to determine what is true and what isn’t. Michael J. Socolow, a journalism professor at the University of Maine, offers this three-tiered approach:

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Look for links. If someone tweets about breaking news but doesn’t link to a source, then it’s most likely untrue. Look inside. If the information aligns completely with one’s innermost values and beliefs, there’s a chance it’s not true and is instead designed to take advantage of a person’s biases. This is an effect of the social media echo chamber. Identify motive. Before retweeting a breaking news story or piece of research, one should determine why he or she wants to send the tweet in the first place. If it’s to improve one’s own online image, skip it.

trying to stop the onslaught of fake accounts run by bots. The company’s system already flags accounts that seem like bots. For instance, it notices accounts that repeat the same phrase over and over or try to advertise products in the middle of unrelated conversations. But it hasn’t yet figured out how to do the same for bots that send out messages that are more carefully crafted to sound like things sent by people. The prospect of finding a solution becomes even more complicated when one takes into account the bots that aren’t used for nefarious purposes, such as weather or emergency alerts. Yet there’s hope for progress. In February

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2018, Twitter began removing accounts suspected of bot activity and instituted new rules about how and when sending automatic tweets is appropriate. Twitter isn’t flawless. It was built by people, and the more users it reaches, the harder it is to control. But as evidenced by its past, the future of Twitter will be determined by its users. If users refuse to tolerate fake accounts, misinformation, and hate speech, then Twitter will either have to change its policies or risk losing its users and main source of income. Twitter can be a force for good online and in the physical world, but it is up to

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the people who use it to make it that way.

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CHAPTER NINE

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SOCIAL ACTIVISM ON TWITTER

P

olitical activity on Twitter goes beyond policy announcements by government officials. Since 2011, Twitter has also been

a prominent platform for social activism in the United States and abroad. This is in great part because of how Twitter is structured. Unlike other social media platforms, Twitter is designed to quickly spread information to an audience that

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goes beyond one’s immediate family and friends. There are three components to this. The first is that many Twitter users choose to keep their account’s default public setting. That means anyone can read their tweets, which helps retweeted messages reach a wider audience. The second component is Twitter’s character limit. Tweets have to remain short, which makes

Twitter played a role in organizing protests in the Arab world in 2011.

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them easier to read and

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understand. The third factor is #NEVERAGAIN

the prevalence of smartphone

On February 14, 2018, 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were murdered by a former student wielding a rifle. Two days later, Parkland students Cameron Kasky, Jacyln Corin, and Alex Wind gathered to mourn and discuss how to prevent situations like this from ever happening again. They began by taking to Twitter with the hashtag #NeverAgain. The phrase had been used sporadically since the afternoon of the shooting, but as the Parkland students tweeted about their experiences and the people who died, it gained traction.

usage throughout much of

Since then, survivors of the shooting have used Twitter as one of their main platforms as they push for social change and gun control. They tweet directly to politicians, share information and statistics, and tell their followers how they can join the movement. Twitter helped them keep their movement and message alive after the national uproar about the mass shooting subsided.

power of Twitter to fight for

the developed world. In most cases, smartphone users have the internet at their fingertips no matter where they are. They don’t have to be at home on their computers or watching TV to share what’s happening where they are and learn what’s going on in the rest of the world. All around the world, activists are harnessing the social change.

#ARABSPRING In December 2010, a Tunisian man named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of a Tunisian government office in a desperate protest against the

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Twitter and other social media services make it possible to quickly organize large-scale protests.

government’s oppressive policies. Onlookers were unable to save him. Later that day, a video of the horrific event showed up on Facebook. Within days, protests had broken out all over the country. Young Tunisians who were concerned about chronic unemployment and poverty, rising food prices, and a lack of government investment in the country’s infrastructure spread the protest movement. Their calls to action appeared primarily on social media, mostly Facebook.

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At the time, very few Tunisians used Twitter. Those who did use it saw their friends’ Facebook posts about upcoming rallies and protests and posted that information to their own Twitter accounts. News of the Tunisian revolution spread quickly on

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GLOBAL CENSORSHIP OF TWITTER Twitter allows people from all over the world to communicate with one another, but there are some places where the service can’t be used. As of April 2018, China, Iran, and North Korea blocked the social media platform within their borders. All three countries have strict laws against free speech. Other countries have suspended Twitter use temporarily during times of civil unrest. Egypt did that during the Arab Spring in an effort to prevent protesters from sharing information with the rest of the world. Despite countrywide restrictions, some ten million Chinese residents are active users of Twitter. 1 That’s because they use virtual private network (VPN) technology to access internet connections outside of China, thereby getting around the country’s censored web system.

Twitter and sparked what is now known as the Arab Spring. Citizens of several Arab nations took to the streets to protest corrupt and authoritarian governments while the rest of the world watched on social media and television news networks. Twitter was instrumental in the dissemination of logistical information, such as rally locations, warnings about police brutality, and pleas for information about family members and friends who had gone missing during the riots.

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It also provided a way for people to truthfully document what they were experiencing in real time. Arab journalists are often limited in what they can safely say about their countries’ governments. Civilians posting to Twitter had no such limits, nor did the Western journalists embedded in Arab countries. They too tweeted play-by-plays of the region’s uprisings, sharing stories that would normally be squashed by the government. Political analysts are quick to point out that Twitter didn’t cause the Arab Spring. Some even debate how effective Twitter was in spreading information within individual countries, especially those with low internet usage. But there is little doubt that Twitter was an important tool for activists on the ground, and even Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

more important in showing the rest of the world what was happening.

#BLACKLIVESMATTER Like the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Black Lives Matter movement is bringing attention to racial inequalities in the United States, particularly in how African Americans are treated by police officers. Whereas the civil rights movement relied on peaceful protests, marches, and public speeches, Black Lives Matter has

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A hashtag helped the Black Lives Matter movement evolve into a nationwide wave of activism.

relied heavily on social media to organize and spread information. In fact, social media is where the Black Lives Matter movement began. In July 2013, a Florida jury declared George Zimmerman, a white Hispanic man, not guilty in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African

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American teenager. As Martin’s family, friends, and acquaintances mourned the verdict, which was announced live on TV, artist and activist Patrisse Cullors commented on a Facebook friend’s post with the hashtag “#blacklivesmatter.” 2 The hashtag spread to Twitter. Within a year, activists around the United States were using the phrase to describe the movement to Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

end police brutality against African Americans. As their message spread and more high-profile deaths occurred, #blacklivesmatter dominated the conversation on Twitter and other media platforms. By March 2016, the hashtag had

WHAT IS BLACK TWITTER? Loosely bound by hashtags, Black Twitter is the home to an ongoing conversation among African American Twitter users about what it’s like to be black in American society. Journalist Jenna Wortham notes that Black Twitter emerged organically as a “spontaneous” community created “by and for black Twitter users who follow or promote black culture.” 3 Topics of discussion range from the need for social change to what happened on last night’s episode of Love & Hip Hop to what’s on the table at Thanksgiving dinner. Twitter is a natural place for these types of conversations. According to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, 22 percent of African Americans who are online use Twitter, compared with 16 percent of white Americans who are online. 4 For many, Black Twitter is a place for learning, debating, connecting, and building relationships within the black community, regardless of physical location.

been used on Twitter more than 11.8 million times, making

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it the third-most-used hashtag in Twitter’s ten-year history. 5 The most-used hashtag of Twitter’s first ten years was #Ferguson, which refers to the death of Michael Brown, a black teenager fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.

#METOO In 2007, black female activist Tarana Burke started a new campaign called “Me Too” to let young women of color who had been sexually assaulted know they were not alone. Burke’s campaign was part of Just Be Inc., the organization she founded to improve the health and well-being of young women of color. Her “Me Too” campaign, which was at first focused in the American Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

South before spreading to Myspace, became an important message in minority communities. A decade later, the fall of 2017 was filled with stories of powerful men in the media sexually harassing and assaulting their female colleagues. On October 15, 2017, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted: “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” 6 Her purpose for sending the original tweet was just like Burke’s—to let other survivors of sexual assault know they were not alone. The only differences in Milano’s

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Using Twitter as one of its major communication methods, the “Me Too” campaign helped bring stories of sexual harassment and assault into public view.

version were the sender (a celebrity) and the medium she used to transmit it (Twitter). Milano’s post went viral immediately as high-profile celebrities, including actors Gabrielle Union, Debra

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Messing, and America Ferrera, TWEETING FOR CHARITY

posted their own #MeToo

Making donations to charitable organizations is social activism everyone can do. Since Twitter’s creation, charities such as the World Wildlife Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, and charity: water have used the service to share stories about their work and the people they help. They’re not alone. A 2014 study by the University of MassachusettsDartmouth Center for Marketing Research indicates 86 percent of charities and nonprofit organizations use Twitter. 8

tweets. The message trickled

When it comes to fund-raising, 71 percent of charities and nonprofits find social media “somewhat useful” or “very useful.” 9 One organization is working to make charitable donations even easier for Twitter users. Charitweet is a Twitter-based service that allows people to donate to their charity of choice with a single tweet. The user’s donation is safely transferred to the charity’s account, and the charity gets publicity within the donor’s social network.

to their followers, who added their voices and posted it for their own followers. The news media picked up the story, and within nine days, Twitter counted 1.7 million #MeToo tweets from more than 85 countries. 7 Twitter has changed the very nature of social activism in the United States and around the world. It might not be the cause of revolution or social change, but it is a vehicle for people to organize themselves, promote solidarity, and make their voices heard.

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Activists and protesters of all kinds can magnify their voices on social media.

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TIMELINE 2005

2008

Noah Glass and Evan Williams collaborate to create Odeo, a podcasting service.

CEO Dorsey is replaced by Williams in October.

2006 Williams pivots the company to work on a new service, Twitter; Twitter’s public launch in July garners little interest.

2007

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Twitter is used at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, in March to wide acclaim; Illinois senator Barack Obama sends his first tweet in April.

2010 Twitter begins accepting paid advertising; CEO Williams is replaced by Dick Costolo in October.

2011 In the Arab Spring, a series of political movements in the Middle East, Twitter is one of the key social media tools that activists use to organize.

2013 The Black Lives Matter movement begins on Twitter in July; in November, Twitter becomes a publicly traded company.

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2015

2018

CEO Costolo is replaced by Dorsey, who is now also the CEO of Square.

In May, a judge rules that President Trump is not legally allowed to block users on Twitter, due to First Amendment protections; Dorsey vows to take more action against bots, trolls, and harassers on Twitter.

2016 Donald Trump wins the hotly contested 2016 presidential election in November; analysts view his use of Twitter as playing a role in his victory.

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2017 Twitter changes its hallmark 140-character limit to 280 characters in September; in October, the #MeToo movement sweeps Twitter and other social media sites; in December, Twitter introduces new site rules about hate speech and threats made using the platform, and the company has its first profitable quarter since its founding.

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ESSENTIAL FACTS KEY PLAYERS FOUNDERS • Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Noah Glass CEO S • Jack Dorsey (2006–2008) • Evan Williams (2008–2010) • Dick Costolo (2010–2015) • Jack Dorsey (from 2015)

KEY STATISTICS • Twitter’s total number of active monthly users in December 2017 was 330 million. • The estimated value of Twitter is approximately $25 billion. • The nation that makes up the largest share of Twitter users is the United States, with 21 percent. Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• The Twitter service is available in 40 languages. • Twitter has 35 offices around the world.

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IMPACT ON HISTORY From its early beginnings as a status-messaging service to its widespread adoption by people from all walks of life, Twitter has revolutionized the way people communicate. Its platform allows users to share, discuss, and debate ideas and information with people all over the globe. It has changed the way politicians reach their constituents and how media organizations report the news. It acts as a megaphone for people championing a cause and making change. At the same time, misuse of the platform by trolls and bots has proven to be harmful to society.

QUOTE “What’s happening? What’s everyone talking about? What’s trending?”

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—From a Twitter advertising campaign, 2016

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GLOSSARY activism The policy or action of using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change.

avatar A character or icon that represents someone online.

brand A name or mark a company uses to distinguish its products from those of other companies.

endorse To recommend something, such as a product or a service, for financial compensation.

executive branch The part of a federal or state government responsible for implementing, supporting, and enforcing laws.

GIF Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

An image or animation stored in a specific compressed format.

hearsay A rumor or rumors.

mainstream media A collection of far-reaching news organizations that reflect and shape societal thought.

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misogynistic Having hatred of or contempt for women.

podcasting The act of creating and distributing a digital audio file, such as a music or talk program, over the internet.

propaganda Information that carries facts or details slanted to favor a single point of view or political bias.

public relations The business of promoting public goodwill for a particular person, organization, or idea.

racist Treating a person or group as inferior based on race.

revenue Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

A company’s income.

stigma A mark or feeling of shame or discredit.

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Bilton, Nick. Hatching Twitter. Portfolio/Penguin, 2013. North, Anna. “How Donald Trump Tweets.” New York Times, 13 Apr. 2016, nytimes.com. Accessed 23 Mar. 2018.

FURTHER READINGS Edwards, Sue Bradford, and Duchess Harris, JD, PhD. Black Lives Matter. Abdo, 2016. Heppermann, Christine. Twitter: The Company and Its Founders. Abdo, 2011.

ONLINE RESOURCES

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To learn more about Twitter, visit abdobooklinks.com. These links are routinely monitored and updated to provide the most current information available.

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MORE INFORMATION For more information on this subject, contact or visit the following organizations: CENTER FOR MARKETING RESEARCH AT UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS-DARTMOUTH 285 Old Westport Rd. Dartmouth, MA 02747-2300 508-999-8000 umassd.edu/cmr

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The University of Massachusetts’s Center for Marketing Research (CMR) pairs students studying marketing and research fields with real-world local and national clients. Among other topics, the CMR specializes in social media research. PEW RESEARCH CENTER 1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 202-419-4300 pewresearch.org The Pew Research center is an independent research organization that studies US politics and policy, journalism and media, the internet, science and technology, religion, and social and demographic trends around the world.

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SOURCE NOTES CHAPTER 1. TWITTER TAKEOVER 1. John Haltiwanger. “Trump’s North Korea ‘Button’ Tweet Increased Risk of a Nuclear Attack and Was ‘Highly Stupid,’ Congressman Says.” Newsweek, 4 Jan. 2018, newsweek.com. Accessed 27 Mar. 2018. 2. Haltiwanger, “Trump’s North Korea ‘Button’ Tweet Increased Risk of a Nuclear Attack.” 3. Saba Hamedy and Joyce Tseng. “All the Times President Trump Has Insulted North Korea.” CNN, 9 Mar. 2018, cnn.com. Accessed 27 Mar. 2018. 4. Michael Crowley. “Trump’s North Korea Tweets Shatter Decades-Old Nuclear Taboo.” Politico, 3 Jan. 2018, politico.com. Accessed 27 Mar. 2018. 5. Mike Isaac. “Without Naming Trump, Twitter Says It Won’t Block World Leaders.” New York Times, 5 Jan. 2018, nytimes.com. Accessed 23 Mar. 2018. 6. Tamara Keith. “From ‘Covfefe’ to Slamming CNN: Trump’s Year in Tweets.” NPR, 20 Dec. 2017, npr.org. Accessed 25 Mar. 2018. 7. “@realDonaldTrump.” Twitter, n.d., twitter.com. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 8. “Twitter’s User Base to Grow by Double Digits This Year.” eMarketer, 22 July 2016, emarketer.com. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018. 9. Christina Newberry. “28 Twitter Statistics All Marketers Need to Know in 2018.” Hootsuite, 18 Jan. 2018, blog.hootsuite.com. Accessed 14 Apr. 2018.

CHAPTER 2. THE START-UP 1. “Evan Williams.” Forbes, 17 Apr. 2018, forbes.com. Accessed 17 Apr. 2018.

Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

2. Biz Stone. “What’s Happening with Me.” Medium, 16 May 2017, medium.com. Accessed 23 Apr. 2018. 3. Nick Bilton. Hatching Twitter. Penguin, 2013. 67. 4. Bilton, Hatching Twitter, 93. 5. Bilton, Hatching Twitter, 87–88, 91. 6. Bilton, Hatching Twitter, 84.

CHAPTER 3. TWITTER GOES MAINSTREAM 1. Nick Bilton. Hatching Twitter. Penguin, 2013. 108. 2. Lahle Wolfe. “Twitter User Statistics 2008 Through 2018.” Balance, 31 Aug. 2017, thebalance.com. Accessed 15 Apr. 2018. 3. Emily Jane Fox. “Former Twitter C.E.O. Dick Costolo Has Dreams of Being a Fitness Guru.” Vanity Fair, 29 Sept. 2016, vanityfair.com. Accessed 15 Apr. 2018. 4. Fox, “Former Twitter C.E.O. Dick Costolo Has Dreams of Being a Fitness Guru.” 5. “Jack Dorsey.” Forbes, 8 Apr. 2018, forbes.com. Accessed 8 Apr. 2018.

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6. Sarah Perez. “Twitter Tries to Explain Itself—Again!—Via a New Marketing Campaign Aimed at Attracting Users.” TechCrunch, 25 July 2016, techcrunch.com. Accessed 15 Apr. 2018. 7. “Number of Monthly Active Facebook Users Worldwide as of 4th Quarter 2017 (In Millions).” Statista, 2018, statista.com. Accessed 16 Apr. 2018. 8. Matthew Lynley. “Twitter Is Now Worth More Than Snap.” TechCrunch, 8 Feb. 2018, techcrunch.com. Accessed 29 Apr. 2018. 9. Wolfe, “Twitter User Statistics.”

CHAPTER 4. THE THREE TIERS OF TWITTER USE 1. Erik Sherman. “Many Twitter Users Don’t Tweet, Finds Report.” CBS News, 14 Apr. 2014, cbsnews.com. Accessed 17 Apr. 2018. 2. Nicole Lee. “From Dodgeball to Swarm, Foursquare Seeks to Move Beyond the Check-in.” Engadget, 15 May 2014, engadget.com. Accessed 17 Apr. 2018. 3. Greta Van Susteren. Everything You Need to Know about Social Media (Without Having to Call a Kid). Simon and Schuster, 2017. 141. 4. “Replies and Retweets on Twitter.” Sysomos, Sept. 2010, sysomos.com. Accessed 17 Apr. 2018. 5. Kit Smith. “44 Incredible and Interesting Twitter Statistics.” Brandwatch, 17 Dec. 2017, brandwatch.com. Accessed 17 Apr. 2018. 6. Matt Raymond. “How Tweet It Is!: Library Acquires Entire Twitter Archive.” Library of Congress, 10 Apr. 2010, blogs.loc.gov. Accessed 17 Apr. 2018.

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7. Salman Aslam. “Twitter by the Numbers: Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts.” Omnicore, 1 Jan. 2018, omnicoreagency.com. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018.

CHAPTER 5. BUILDING BRANDS WITH TWITTER 1. “Create a Followers Campaign.” Twitter, n.d., business.twitter.com. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 2. Kurt Wagner. “Twitter Just Reported Its First Profitable Quarter Ever, but Didn’t Add Any New Users in Q4.” Recode, 8 Feb. 2018, recode.net. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 3. Erik Oster. “Majority of Consumers Want Brands to Take a Stand on Social and Political Issues, According to New Study.” Adweek, 12 Jan. 2018, adweek.com. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 4. David Cohen. “#NuggsForCarter.” Adweek, 9 May 2017, adweek.com. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 5. “Twitter: Most Followers.” Friend or Follow, 2018, friendorfollow.com. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 6. Mark Memott. “Here’s Ellen’s Star-Stuffed Oscar Selfie That Broke Twitter.” NPR, 3 Mar. 2014, npr.org. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018.

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SOURCE NOTES

CONTINUED

CHAPTER 6. TWITTER’S INFLUENCE ON NEWS MEDIA 1. “World Wide Web Timeline.” Pew Research Center, 11 Mar. 2014, pewinternet.org. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 2. David Shedden. “Today in Media History: In 2011, Twitter Broke the News of Osama bin Laden’s Death.” Poynter Institute, 1 May 2015, pointer.org. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 3. Shea Bennett. “How the Death of Osama bin Laden Broke on Twitter.” Adweek, 2 May 2011, adweek.com. Accessed 24 Apr. 2018. 4. Kari Paul. “False News Stories Are 70% More Likely to Be Retweeted on Twitter Than True Ones.” Marketwatch, 14 Mar. 2017. marketwatch.com. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018. 5. Ryan Broderick. “Here Are All the Hoaxes Being Spread about the Las Vegas Shooting.” BuzzFeed News, 3 Oct. 2017, buzzfeed.com. Accessed 19 Apr. 2018. 6. Alecia Swasy. “I Studied How Journalists Used Twitter for Two Years. Here’s What I Learned.” Poynter Institute, 22 Mar. 2017, pointer.org. Accessed 18 Apr. 2018.

CHAPTER 7. TWITTER’S PLACE IN POLITICS 1. “@barackobama.” Twitter, 29 Apr. 2007, twitter.com. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 2. Nick Bilton. Hatching Twitter. Penguin, 2013. 108. 3. Aaron Smith. “The Internet’s Role in Campaign 2008.” Pew Research Center, 15 Apr. 2009, pewinternet.org. Accessed 30 Mar. 2018. 4. Terry Collins. “Dems Turn to Facebook, Twitter after Cameras Turned Off over Gun Sit-In.” CNET, 22 June 2016, cnet.com. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018. Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

5. Glenn Thrush. “Trump Defends Twitter Use as Aides Urge Him to Cut Back.” New York Times, 6 June 2017, nytimes.com. Accessed 23 Mar. 2018. 6. Paul Dughi. “It’s Not Just Trump: World Leaders Use Twitter to Get the Message Out.” Medium, 1 June 2017, medium.com. Accessed 21 Apr. 2018. 7. “@realDonaldTrump.” Twitter, n.d., twitter.com. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 8. “@POTUS.” Twitter, n.d., twitter.com. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 9. “@Pontifex.” Twitter, n.d., twitter.com. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 10. “@narendramodi.” Twitter, n.d., twitter.com. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 11. Biz Stone. Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind. Grand Central, 2014. 201. 12. Alan Rappeport. “Donald Trump Holds Q and A in Video Twitter Chat.” New York Times, 21 Sept. 2015, nytimes.com. Accessed 23 Mar. 2018.

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13. Steven Erlanger. “Trump’s Twitter Threats Put American Credibility on the Line.” New York Times, 7 Jan. 2018, nytimes.com. Accessed 23 Mar. 2018. 14. Hamza Shaban. “A Judge May Soon Decide Whether Trump Must Unblock People on Twitter.” Washington Post, 7 Mar. 2018, washingtonpost.com. Accessed 27 Mar. 2018.

CHAPTER 8. THE DARK SIDE OF TWITTER 1. Joel Stein. “How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet.” Time, 28 Aug. 2016, time.com. Accessed 29 Apr. 2018. 2. Jon Russell. “Twitter Is (Finally) Cracking Down on Bots.” TechCrunch, 22 Feb. 2018, techcrunch.com. Accessed 29 Apr. 2018. 3. Ed Winstead. “Faked: The Headquarters. The Followers. The Influence?” New York Times. 27 Jan. 2018, nytimes.com. Accessed 23 Mar. 2018. 4. Winstead, “Faked.” 5. Nicholas Confessore, Gabriel J. X. Dance, Richard Harris, and Mark Hansen. “The Follower Factory.” New York Times, 27 Jan. 2018, nytimes.com. Accessed 23 Mar. 2018. 6. “Enforcing New Rules to Reduce Hateful Conduct and Abusive Behavior.” Twitter, 18 Dec. 2017, blog.twitter.com. Accessed 29 Apr. 2018.

CHAPTER 9. SOCIAL ACTIVISM ON TWITTER

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1. Jon Russell. “Twitter Estimates That It Has 10 Million Users in China.” TechCrunch, 5 July 2016, techcrunch.com. Accessed 29 Apr. 2018. 2. Jenna Wortham. “Black Tweets Matter.” Smithsonian Magazine, Sept. 2016, smithsonianmag.com. Accessed 22 Apr. 2018. 3. Wortham, “Black Tweets Matter.” 4. Wortham, “Black Tweets Matter.” 5. Monica Anderson and Paul Hitlin. “The Hashtag #BlackLivesMatter Emerges: Social Activism on Twitter.” Pew Research Center, 15 Aug. 2016, pewinternet.org. Accessed 27 Apr. 2018. 6. “How ‘Me Too’ Is Showing the Magnitude of Sexual Assault.” Twitter, 16 Oct. 2017, twitter.com. Accessed 27 Apr. 2018. 7. Andrea Park. “#MeToo Reaches 85 Countries with 1.7M Tweets.” CBS News, 24 Oct. 2017, cbsnews.com. Accessed 27 Apr. 2018. 8. Shea Bennett. “86% of Charities and Nonprofits Use Twitter, 71% Say Social Useful for Donations.” Adweek, 21 June 2014, adweek.com. Accessed 14 Aug. 2018. 9. Bennett, “86% of Charities and Nonprofits Use Twitter.”

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INDEX advertising on Twitter, 28, 45–48, 55 Airbnb, 49–50 Anderson, Robert, 43 Apple, 16, 43 Arab Spring, 37, 88–91 “at” symbol (@), 42, 43 Baer, Don, 75 Biden, Joe, 7, 68 bin Laden, Osama, 59 Black Lives Matter, 91–94 Black Twitter, 93 blocking users, 74 Blogger, 15, 17, 19 bots, 79–81, 82, 84–85 brands, 46, 48–51 Burns, R. Nicholas, 74

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cable TV news, 60 censorship, 80, 90 charities, 49, 52, 96 China, 90 citizens band (CB) radio, 58 Costolo, Dick, 28–30, 31 DeGeneres, Ellen, 53, 55 Devumi, 80–81 Dodgeball, 36 Dorsey, Jack, 13, 16, 18–21, 27–28, 30–32, 37, 58 echo chamber effect, 62 Facebook, 13, 22, 29, 32, 68, 89–90, 93 fact-checking, 61 Fail Whale, 26

false news stories, 61–63 First Amendment, 74, 80 Fry, Stephen, 30 fund-raising, 68, 96 Gamergate, 79 Glass, Noah, 13, 15–16, 18, 21, 39 going viral, 36, 46, 55, 95 Google, 15–17, 19, 22, 36 hashtags, 42, 43, 69, 71, 88, 93–94 hate speech, 78, 80, 85 Instagram, 13, 29, 32 iPhone, 68, 79 Kane, Tim, 7 Kelly, Megyn, 30 Kim Jong Un, 5–7 Lady Gaga, 52, 53 Las Vegas, Nevada, shooting, 63 Leahy, Michael Patrick, 69 Library of Congress, 40 McCain, John, 69 “Me Too” campaign, 94–96 Medium, 17 Messina, Chris, 42 Milano, Alyssa, 94–95 Myspace, 68, 94 news media, 9, 13, 37, 57–65, 68, 96 nuclear weapons, 5–6

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Obama, Barack, 8, 9, 51, 53, 59, 67, 68–71 Obvious Corporation, 19, 21 Odeo, 15–16, 18, 19, 31 O’Neal, Shaquille, 52 Parkland, Florida, shooting, 88 Parlio, 36 podcasting, 15–16

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reporters, 58–60, 64, 65 retweets, 9, 38–39, 46, 49, 55, 62, 81, 84, 87 Russia, 37, 79 Saint Louis, Missouri, 31, 58 Samsung, 55 Short Message Service (SMS), 18, 21, 26, 32, 36 Snapchat, 13, 29 social media, 8, 11, 13, 46, 51, 64, 67, 68, 82, 84, 87, 96 Socolow, Michael J., 84 South by Southwest (SXSW), 22, 25 Square, 31 Stone, Biz, 13, 16, 18, 19, 26, 37, 73 Tea Party, 69 terms of service, 7, 82 trolls, 77–78 Trump, Donald, 6–9, 37, 71–73, 74, 75

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Twitter business model, 28, 45–48 character limits, 21, 30, 32 early growth, 25–28 launch, 18–20 name, 18, 20 political neutrality, 73 revenue, 28, 47 user statistics, 9, 10, 22, 25, 32, 33, 36, 67, 90 workforce, 28 Twitter Lite, 10 Twitter users celebrities, 51–55 government officials, 67–75 Tyson, Neil deGrasse, 52 uses of Twitter connecting, 39–43 sharing, 37–39 viewing, 35–37 verified accounts, 51 Weber, Florian, 18 Wilkerson, Carter, 49 Williams, Evan, 13, 15–21, 27–28, 31, 37 world leaders, 7, 33, 40, 72, 74–75 Yiannopoulos, Milo, 78 Yiying Lu, 26

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR KRISTIN MARCINIAK Kristin Marciniak lives in Overland Park, Kansas, with her husband, son, and a rambunctious golden retriever puppy. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

ABOUT THE CONSULTANT ANTHONY ROTOLO

Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Anthony Rotolo was a college professor for more than ten years, teaching at Syracuse University. He taught courses in technology and media, including the very first college class on social media. He is now studying for a PhD in psychology and researching how social media affects people and society.

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Essential Library

TWITTER

Today’s top technology companies play an increasingly central role in our lives. People habitually use Apple or Samsung smartphones to monitor social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Amazon and Netflix are disrupting the shopping and television industries. Google dominates online search and advertising, and Microsoft’s software runs on the vast majority of the world’s personal computers. In the Tech Titans series, delve into the history of these companies, get to know the products and people associated with them, and consider the ways they are changing our world.

BOOKS IN THIS SET

Copyright © 2018. ABDO Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

AMAZON APPLE FACEBOOK GOOGLE

CT_T

MICROSOFT NETFLIX SAMSUNG TWITTER

I S B N 978-1-5321-1692-6

9

781532 116926

MARCINIAK

TECH TITANS

90000