Review all atwitter on social networking

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By EMILY C DAVIS

article created on: 2009-05-01T00:00:00

Oprah’s first tweet garnered criticism from “Tweeple” and Ashton Kutcher beat Larry King in a competition to reach 1 million followers. President Obama has 6,238,229 Facebook supporters. Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton has become, well, a celebrity. Are you confused yet?

The world of social networking changes by the minute, so it’s no wonder many of us struggle to keep up. The irony is, most of these sites are designed to help you do just that. Keep up.

While much of the world got acquainted with Facebook in the last year or so, college students have been using the free service to connect with one another since its inception in 2003. And why not? It’s one-stop-shopping for Internet communication. You can share photo albums with friends and family, invite them to events, send messages, support political movements, stay current on the news and much more.

Of course Facebook is not alone in the networking universe, as of the 2008 presidential election campaign everyone is talking about Twitter.

This free micro-blog service allows you to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets. Tweets are short text-only messages which are displayed on others’ profile pages and delivered to users (followers) who subscribe to them.

You can access Twitter anywhere, at a computer or on your cell phone; making it easier for schools to inform parents of unexpected closures, bands to keep fans in the loop on upcoming concerts, even friends and neighbors to help one another get through an emergency.

During the 2008 Mumbai attacks, twitter users at the scene sent out vital updates as the events unfolded, such as the location of hospitals looking for blood donors, emergency phone numbers and a list of victims.

Governments are using the service. In December, David Saranga of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs annouced Israel would be the first government to hold a worldwide press conference via Twitter to take questions from the public on the war in Gaza.

No matter who you are, social networking makes it easier to stay connected. That is why the Jewish Review can now be found on both Facebook and Twitter.

News happens 24 hours a day, and Social Networking is just another way we’re keeping you updated as stories break.

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