TWITTER-EXPRESS YOURSELF IN 140 CHARACTERS

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read other user messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page. Tweets are publicly visible by default, however senders can restrict message delivery to their friends list. Users may subscribe to other author tweetsthis is known as following and subscribers are known as followers. As of late 2009, users can follow lists of authors instead of following individual authors. All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, compatible external applications (such as, for smartphones), or by Short Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries. While the service is free, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees. Since its creation in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Twitter has gained notability and popularity worldwide and currently has more than 100 million users worldwide It is sometimes described as the "SMS of the Internet." The use of Twitter's application programming interface (API) for sending and receiving SMS from other applications often dominates the direct use of Twitter. Twitter's origins lie in a "daylong brainstorming session" that was held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. During the meeting, Jack Dorsey introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group, a concept partially inspired by the SMS group messaging service TXTMob We came across the word "twitter," and it was just perfect. The definition was "a short burst of inconsequential information," and "chirps from birds." And thats exactly what the product was. Jack Dorsey. The original project code name for the service was twttr, inspired by Flickr and the five character length of American SMS short codes. The developers initially considered "10958 as a short code, but later changed it to "40404 for "ease of use and memorability." Work on the project started on March 21, 2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9:50 PM Pacific Standard Time (PST): "just setting up my twttr." By March 2010, Twitter recorded a 1,500% increase in the number of registered users and its staff had grown fivefold. Over 70,000 registered applications have been created for Twitter, according to the company. Twitter had 500,000 tweets posted per quarter in 2007. This grew to 100 million tweets posted per quarter in 2008. By the end of 2009, 2 billion tweets per quarter were being posted. In the first quarter of 2010, 4 billion tweets have been posted. Currently, about 65 million tweets are posted each day, equalling about 750 tweets sent each second, according to Twitter. Additionally, Twitter's usage spikes during prominent events. For example, a record was set during the 2010 FIFA World Cup fans wrote 2,940 tweets per

second in the 30 second period after Japan scored against Cameroon on 14 June 2010. The record was broken again when 3,085 tweets a second were posted after the Los Angeles Lakers' victory in the 2010 NBA Finals on 17 June 2010. Twitter is ranked as one of the 50 most visited websites worldwide by Alexa's web traffic analysis.

Use in education
The Distance College of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, used Twitter with native Chinese students to train communicative and cultural competence. Students had to post a number of English tweets and react to the tweets of their fellow students. Twitter was viewed as a supplement to practice different aspects of the target language in authentic environment. The University of Vienna, Austria, used Twitter as an evaluation platform for student ratings. Every student had to send a tweet after each course unit with feedback to the teacher. Twitter's simplicity and electronic data handling required small administrative effort and turned out to be "a useful tool for evaluating a course formatively" At the University of Texas at Dallas, Twitter has been incorporated into the classroom setting of History courses with big groups of students. This allows more students to express their views in the class discussions and forces them to focus on the central point due to the character limit. According to telegraph.co.uk, Twitter is put on the new primary school curriculum. Children should be able to "organise and adjust" speaking and writing skills depending on the technology being used, including using "emails, messaging, wikis and twitters". During the primary years, children should also be taught to speak, write and broadcast using "blogs, podcasts, websites, email [and] video" In 2009, higher education faculty began using Twitter to help establish social presence and just-in-time interaction with students that are not bound by a learning management system. USE IN EMERGENCIES During the 2008 Mumbai attacks, eyewitnesses sent an estimated 16 tweets every second. Twitter users on the ground helped compile a list of the dead and injured. In addition, users sent out vital information such as emergency phone numbers and the location of hospitals needing blood donations. CNN called this "the day that social media appeared to come of age" since many different groups made significant use of Twitter to gather news and coordinate responses. In April 2009, public health departments used Twitter to provide updates on H1N1 cases.

Use in campaigning

Twitter was used by candidates in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign throughout the race. Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama used it for publicity The NaderGonzalez campaign updated its ballot access teams in real time with Twitter and Google Maps Twitter use increased by 43% on the day of the United States 2008 election . TWITTERS FAME IN INDIA. Twitter is very much popular in india also.Many bollywood celebrities like karan johar,amitabh bachan.shahrukh khan ,shobha de,javed akhtar use twitter to interact with their fans.javed akhtar & his wife shabana azmi used twitter as a platform to fight for the rights of poets & lyricists.They demanded that every poet & lyricist desrves royality for their work.Indias best journalist BARKHA DUTT expresses her take on various political issues on twitter and she has more than 2 lakh followers.karan johar uses twitter to promote his film.During the contoversy of his film (MY NAME IS KHAN) with shiv sena he and shahrukh khan used twitter to reach out to millions of people to explain them that every muslim is not a terrorist and that islam only preaches to love people and take care of every person and that in this world (There are no good muslims and bad muslimsbut there are only good and bad human beings.) TWITTER is used as a tool by various budding talents to express themselves.By the help of twitter we can educate poor children studying in villages where there are no gooed teachers but computer and internet is available.with the help of twitter we can exchane our ideas with each other and enhance our intellect. With the help of this article all the people who are reading my I request you to join twitter and express your views to educate other people. Come and become a part of (CHANGING INDIA).IF you want to read my tweets my usename on twitter is rajiv parwani and pls let me know whether you liked my tweets or not .your advice means a lot to me. BY-RAJIV PARWANI (BE EXTC)