Why I Like Twitter: The Great Equalizer

Twitter is one of my most used tags (as you can see from the Tag Cloud on the right-hand side). Part of this is because I started that series of people I follow on Twitter, (which is way out of date). In fact, I probably don’t follow a lot of the people who are in those posts, but when I wrote those posts, I did. Anyway, I’ve been using Twitter for almost a year and a half now and I felt compelled to share why I like Twitter.

One of the main reasons I use/like Twitter is for the ability to curate things I may like to read. Some folks would say that this is the same function that RSS served when it first came out — yes, this is true. When RSS came out, I wasn’t as active on the Internet as am I now. But of course, this isn’t the only reason I like/use Twitter. You can also have conversations with people (plural!). For instance, just last week, after watching The Conspirator, I took to Twitter to say some things about capital punishment. In my series of tweets about capital punishment, I had some questions. Thanks to Twitter, someone responded to my question — and even included a source!

Perhaps the thing I like the most about Twitter — everyone’s on an equal (arguably) playing field. Yes, some have more followers than others and yes, there are promoted tweets, but more or less, the people on Twitter are tweeting for themselves. That is, when Lady Gaga tweets something, it’s probably her talking. Similarly, when I tweet, it’s me tweeting. There are famous athletes like LeBron James, famous actors like Tom Hanks, famous chefs like Guy Fieri, and — of course — famous politicians like Barack Obama. Though, not every tweet from President Obama’s Twitter account is something from him (personally).