Twitter usage
Since the launch of Twitter on July 15, 2006, there have been many notable uses for the service in a variety of environments, including political, economic, social and cultural uses. As users tweet their messages on Twitter, they encourage other people to respond and engage in online discussions as well as offline activities. User engagement on Twitter is usually measured with likes, replies and retweets and is a form of social power.
After the 2022 acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, Twitter was rebranded as X; however, the X platform is still widely referred to as Twitter.
In legal proceedings
The first criminal prosecution arising from Twitter posts was started in April 2009. FBI agents arrested Daniel Knight Hayden, who was accused of sending threatening tweets in connection with his plan to attend a Tea Party protest in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.In July 2009, Horizon Realty Group, a Chicago real estate management company, sued a former tenant, Amanda Bonnen, for libel based on a Twitter message she sent to friends. Horizon contended that Bonnen defamed Horizon by posting a tweet to her friends that said, "You should just come anyway. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's ok." Horizon asked for at least $50,000 for the alleged libel. The lawsuit prompted widespread comment from journalists, bloggers, and legal experts. In January 2010, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane J. Larsen granted Bonnen's motion to dismiss, stating that the statement was "too vague" to amount to defamation.
In October 2010, PhoneDog unsuccessfully sued employee Noah Kravitz in PhoneDog v. Kravitz for misusing trade secrets after he quit his job and began using the PhoneDog Twitter account to post Tweets for a competitor.
In February 2012, Hamza Kashgari, a Saudi poet and a former columnist for the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Bilad, became the subject of a religious and legal controversy after being accused of insulting the prophet Mohammad in three tweets published on Twitter. Kashgari risks the death penalty for his three tweets. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia ordered that Kashgari be arrested "for crossing red lines and denigrating religious beliefs in God and His Prophet." Kashgari left Saudi Arabia, trying to seek political asylum in New Zealand. He was deported from Kuala Lumpur back to Saudi Arabia on February 12, about three and a half hours before a Malaysian High Court injunction against the deportation was issued.
In November 2013, Agence France-Presse and Getty Images were ordered to pay $1.2 million compensation to freelance photojournalist Daniel Morel for using his images posted on Twitter related to the 2010 Haiti earthquake without his permission, in violation of copyright and Twitter's terms of service.
In education
Research on using Twitter in education has been conducted by Dr. Reynol Junco and his colleagues. Using a controlled experimental design with random assignment, they found that classroom use of Twitter in specific ways such as continuing course discussions outside of class led to significant increases in student engagement and grades for all of their courses. Junco and his colleagues have also found that these benefits only apply when professors interact with students on Twitter, when they require Twitter use as part of a course, and when Twitter is integrated into the curriculum in ways that make sense for that particular course. This data shows the benefits of Twitter as compared to other static educational technology tools such as blogs, wikis, and learning management systems.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.
Mia Moody states that Twitter can be used to teach students. They will be more involved in lectures and lessons if they have a chance to use social media throughout the course. Social media has changed the way people live, connect, and do business. She also explains how it is a good way to improve student participation. Shy students are more likely to open up behind a computer screen or the screen of their smartphone.
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 large 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 The Daily Telegraph, 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 video."
In 2009, higher education faculty began using Twitter to help establish social presence and just-in-time interaction with students who are not bound by a learning management system.
Educational organizations in Spain and other countries also use Twitter in the virtual classrooms. Such is the cause of Universidad Oberta de Catalunya, Postgraduate School. Students utilize Twitter to summarize courses learning outcomes.
An example of an educational Twitter account is @RealTimeWWII, which tweets the events of World War II on a daily basis from 2011 until 2017.
In health and medicine
There have been many applications of social media within health contexts, ranging from the World Health Organization using Twitter during the H1N1 pandemic, with more than 11,700 followers, to medical practices and health professionals obtaining information to inform their clinical practice.The use of web 2.0 tools and especially Twitter is in full expansion. Twitter has jumped from the personal field to the professional with great success, joining as a means of regular dissemination in scientific congresses. Although initially the tweeted community was small and a few were responsible for a majority of tweets, the progressive growth and penetration of Twitter has made that in recent congresses, these influencers and institutional accounts are no longer the main driver of the use of Twitter in the congresses. Given the global trend, it is expected that tools such as Twitter play an increasingly important role in the management and transmission of knowledge, as well as in the creation of collaborative networks between professionals.
In emergencies
Research reported in New Scientist in May 2008 found that blogs, maps, photo sites and instant messaging systems like Twitter did a better job of getting information out during emergencies than either the traditional news media or government emergency services. The study also found that those using Twitter during the fires in California in October 2007 kept their followers informed of their whereabouts and of the location of various fires minute by minute. Relief effort organizations are also using Twitter. The American Red Cross started using Twitter to exchange minute-by-minute information about local disasters including statistics and directions.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 January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 experienced multiple bird strikes and had to land in water in the Hudson River. Janis Krums, a passenger on one of the ferries that rushed to help, took a picture of the downed plane as passengers were still evacuating and sent it to Twitpic before any other media arrived at the scene. For this he won the Shorty Award for Real-Time Photo of the Year.
The Victorian Country Fire Authority in Australia used Twitter to send out regular alerts and updates regarding the February 2009 bushfires. The then Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd used his Twitter account to send out information on the fires, how to donate money and blood, and where to seek emergency help.
In April 2009, public health departments used Twitter to provide updates on H1N1 cases.
Twitter was also massively used in 2014 Balkan floods. Its efficiency and speed was considered to be "very useful" in exchanging information about flood victims and missing persons.
In public opinion and trends
During the CBC News television coverage of the Canadian federal election on October 14, 2008, the CBC cited tweets regarding Elizabeth May and Stéphane Dion along with a graph of items mentioned on Twitter as evidence that people were calling for Dion to step down in response to the election results.As of April 26, 2010, the Australian television program Q&A began showing selected tweets on screen during the live broadcast, which carried the hashtag "#qanda".
Ratio
The ratio is a tongue-in-cheek rule-of-thumb method of judging how popular a Twitter post is, by comparing the number of replies and/or quote retweets to likes. A comment that has many replies but few likes is judged likely to be unpopular and the replies are likely those expressing disapproval.Another common form of ratio is when a reply or quote retweet gets more likes than the post it is replying to, signifying that more people agree with the reply than the original post. Twitter users may "initiate" a ratio by replying or quote retweeting a tweet with the text "ratio" in the hopes that their tweet acquires more likes and/or retweets than the tweet being replied to. They may not always succeed; a "ratio" tweet that does not achieve this is known as a failed ratio or ''flop.''