BBC Learning English

Keep Your English Up To Date

23rd June 2009
Tweet
'Tweet'. The booming popularity of online social networking sites has given the English
language a bumper crop of new words. Although some of these sites, and the words
associated with them, may prove to be short-lived, here today and gone tomorrow, there are
others, such as Facebook (see Series 4) which seem to be here to stay.

The latest big thing in the world of digital media is Twitter, a social networking site which
began back in 2006 and has been growing ever since. Users post short micro-blogs
(messages) called tweets - T-W-E-E-T-S - from their mobile phone or computer to let other
people know what theyre doing or to ask a question.

The difference between these and a normal text message or email is that a tweet is out
there in cyberspace, no more than 140 characters long and can be read or answered by
anybody on the network. Just like the words google and facebook, tweet can be used as a
noun or a verb. Twitter is increasingly used for market research, so many companies are now
asking themselves To tweet or not to tweet?

The popularity of Twitter grew after it was used by US presidential candidates before the
2008 election to keep their followers up to date Barack Obama had hundreds of thousands
of followers during the election campaign, although he seemed to stop tweeting shortly after
the election. I guess he must have been quite busy!

Twitter has spawned a number of related words such as twestival (a gathering organised on
Twitter) and twirgin (someone who is new to Twitter or a first-time user). In fact, if you see
an unfamiliar word which starts with a TW- prefix, its probably a new word coined by the
Twitter community. Some of these words may not make it into the dictionaries, but Twitter
seems set to live on.

Keep Your English Up To Date

British Broadcasting Corporation 2009

Page 1 of 2
bbclearningenglish.com

Jim Pettiward has a BA (hons) in French and Spanish, CTEFLA and Trinity TESOL Diploma.
He has taught EFL, EAP, ESP and Business English in Ecuador, Venezuela, Hungary and the
UK. He has also worked as an ICT trainer for the British Council and the University of the
Arts, London. He is currently teaching English for Academic Purposes in the Department of
Humanities, Arts, Languages and Education at London Metropolitan University.

Keep Your English Up To Date

British Broadcasting Corporation 2009

Page 2 of 2
bbclearningenglish.com