Within the 2000s, it seems like every few years there has been a similar yet new, more creative way for people to communicate online by using their identity. In the early 2000s, MySpace became the first, really popular website on the Internet with its users keeping in touch with old friends, putting up pictures of them and their friends, and was a new way for businesses to network themselves. Then Facebook became popular in the mid-2000s with it being more organized and mainly set up for college students. Facebook was similar yet more advanced than MySpace because its users’ pictures had their names added to them and were labeled when a computer mouse is pointed at a specific person. Now Twitter has become a new way to communicate with the world using identity, and even though it is not the most popular way to use technology communication today, Twitter has taken Facebook’s “walls” to another level.
Seeing how popular Twitter was becoming after coming out in 2006, Facebook tried to do the same thing by making micro-blogging “walls” in 2007, but Facebook has not come close in that department with Twitter’s dramatic growth in 2009. Twitter is basically a micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates known as “tweets.” Tweets are text-messaged posts of up to 140 characters (spots to type) that are located on the user's profile page and sent to other users who have subscribed to them, called “followers.”
Users can send and receive tweets to people in their group of friends or anybody else they allow. Facebook and Twitter users’ both can via their websites and text-message using advanced mobile phones, but who the users actually are has been the difference between the two. Facebook was made for college students, so it’s identity communication is between college students and their friends. Twitter is different because it was made for people of all ages to communicate with people of all ages. Twitter has brought people like Oprah Winfrey and President Barack Obama from older generations to do what college students do on their walls in Facebook, and now Twitter has become the thing to do when it comes to text-messaging.
With the rise of Twitter, it has also made it easier for sports journalists to communicate with athletes and other followers because they can send or receive a post within a matter of seconds. FOXSports.com sportswriter, Jeff Legwold, has his own Twitter account and believes it has helped sports journalism.
"It is much faster (with Twitter) to do research and those types of things with new technology at our fingertips. I can twitter or should I say, tweet, something right now that I knew about the (Denver) Broncos, the NFL or whatever, and it will reach to the reader instantly."
Twitter is a fairly new technology to sports athletes, so not too many athletes have their own account but has gradually become popular with them. Helen Ross, golf reporter for PGATOUR.com, follows the PGA Tour all season long, and has noticed golfers like Stewart Cink and Adam Scott are using Twitter more and more these days.
"We have one player, Stewart Cink, that is really into twittering. He started twittering in February of this year. He told me he was going to provide updates for his followers during The Masters and by the time The Masters came in April, Stewart had over 46,000 followers. Then I talked to him yesterday (May 2nd) and he told me he has over 128,000 followers. He now sometimes tweets how his practice round went the day before a tournament, and I can put that online for golf fans to see how he might do that weekend."
From the work end of the job though, with the addition of Twitter and text-messaging, the demand for quality journalism has increased making it more difficult for journalists because there isn’t as much off-time. Since they are on the job all the time, it’s like there are no deadlines anymore because journalists constantly have to update and add information to their articles or stories. Personally though, I believe the emergence of new technology communications just mean journalists have to work harder to do their jobs and still post accurate information for their audience to read.
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