Vjan Razon

Professor Michaela Atienza

English 10 WFU2

14 April 2015

Understanding the Twitter Phenomenon

Twitter is an online networking service where users can post and read at most 140character long messages, announcements, updates and statements. Its current number of users
may not be more than half of the internet users now but it is rising unbelievably. It has become
one of the primary means of interactions today. What does Twitter have that makes it special?
Does it affect human interactions? Have you ever considered asking yourself why you tweet?
Understanding the significance between communication and Twitter, Erin Klint, a worker
of elearners.com, said that Humans are social creatures who constantly seek to fulfill basic
emotional needs, including belonging, social acceptance, self-esteem and validation. She said
that some people use Twitter as a healthy outlet, or to indulge extreme narcissism, or worst is to
bully others behind their anonymity. For instance is the case of Robin Williams daughter, who
was forced to delete her account after all the bashes she got when his father committed suicide.
Despite the good and bad effects it gives, in reality, majority of the humans share parts of their
lives online. It [Twitter] is considered as primary method of communication or even replace
more traditional ways of interacting, according to Klint. Proofs of this case are the numerous
updates of peoples special occasions found in Twitter like marriage proposals and birth and
achievement announcements. Even in the simplest things, people tweet about their favorite TV
shows while it is being aired on TV.
Klint also said that Twitter runs as vehicles for business and commercial purposes which
pushes the people to gain more followers, which is actually attained from carefully filtering your
tweets by the retweet-worthy standards and connecting with other influential users. Twitter
also serves as news service rather than a social one in the cases like the Red Cross

Organization in spreading emergency updates. Perhaps Twitter is significantly attached not only
to human communications but the communications in the market world too.
Klints article simply suggests that communication and Twitter are inextricably linked.
She generally related them by giving legit examples of how a social networking service,
specifically Twitter, serves as a path for communication that logically affects human interactions
and how people gear towards it. Klint who is a worker of eLearners.com, an online education
site, believes that there are tons of benefits to online education and perceiving online as the
grounds for primary-method of interaction nowadays. I actually consider her article as a good
basis for understanding Twitter considering that she is an online-educator and her experiences
and field only suggests that she can clearly monitor how online social networking services like
Twitter moves around the web and affects the societys behavior. What Twitter has have been
Grohols grounds on discussing reasons of using Twitter.
In John Grohols article, he focused on the features of Twitter and how and why it
differently affects human behavior from other social networking sites. He is the founder and
CEO of Psych Central, the internets largest and oldest independent mental health social network.
He is also an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about
online behavior, mental health and psychology issues. His background as an expert psychologist,
makes me count his work valuable enough in learning the logic of why people use Twitter.
Grohol compared Twitter to static web page, blogs, and IM/chat rooms in terms of the
quantity of receivers, conversation limits/ openness to feedbacks and accessibility. Static web
page has one to many recipients and conversations are limited, blogs have one to many recipients
and is open for public conversation and IM/chat rooms have one to one/many recipients and are
difficult to access. Twitter, on the other side, has one to one/many recipients, easy to access and

far more public. Twitter acts as a central status updating service as it allows us to update our
social status on other social networks and acts as a new public, global conversation medium as it
brings public conversations to light. He pointed that because humans are inherently social
creatures who engage primarily in conversational talkingWe simply know how to talk, and
Twitter is the first text service to adequately mimic this behavior in an online medium. This
feature is what makes Twitter somehow different and special at the same time
Furthermore, Grohol mentioned a bunch in his pros and cons of Twitter. First, Twitter is
always continuous. This imparts the users an always be there sense to check on something
were missing. Second, it also implies that we dont need to expect instantaneous replies. Third,
we are not sure on what we are missing so we tend to intake a lot of both good and waste-of-time
information. And Twitter turns that idea on its head and instead sends us the unfiltered stream of
consciousness from millions of people. This is one generalization of how Twitter shapes our
way of thinking.
Logically, people use Twitter mainly to stay and feel connected with one another, its
easy to catch up with your followers anywhere, anytime, with virtually any technology, and
Twitter makes socialization extremely simple and always on. This logic was also supported
by Mas ideas on his ideas about the aspect of Twitter as a physiological need.
Moses Ma of the Tao innovation wrote an article on understanding the psychologies of
Twitter by relating Twitter system to Maslows Hierarchy of needs. This is a pyramid displaying
its lowest levels as the basic needs of a human while highest levels refer to the complex ones.
These levels include Physiological Needs, Safety, Love/Friendship/Intimacy, Self Esteem and
Self Actualization respectively from bottom to top.

Starting on how Twitter fills the physiological needs, he said that naturally, human brains
are wired to operate within social context for human survival. But during the industrial
revolution, laborers were separated from their families. Humanity as a culture starved for real
community, continues to express itself through the feeling of community generated in various
ways and now in the twitterverse (universe of Twitter). According to him, this is why people
feel so compelled to tweet. Also, Twitter aims primarily at social needs which refer to the third
level, belonging, love and affection. Connecting to people via Twitter fills up a part of the need
to belong and feel cared about. On the higher level, Ma relates Twitter to self-esteem and social
recognition. Twitter has made normal people to feel like they are celebrities who can have as
many as followers they could have. On the other end, it could exercise narcissism as well. He
quoted Dr. David Lewis (cognitive neuropsychologist) statement which said that using Twitter
suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognize you, you cease to exist. It may
stave off insecurity in short term, but wont cure it and agreed that we are the most narcissistic
age ever. Going back to the levels of Maslows model, Twitter was lastly correlated to the highest
level which is self-actualization. A healthy self-actualization of a person yields him/her to
achieve his/her own authentic being. One direct act of this is being open and by posting tweets
that contemplates things about anything you think of. There are more than 200 marketing gurus
teaching about how to use Twitter as a marketing channel nowadays. For Moses Ma, a user can
actually choose whether to use Twitter as an aid in achieving authentic being or just use it as
really nothing more than a fun and immersive conceptual art installation.
I strongly take Moses Mas article very valuable in understanding the phenomenon of
twitter because he is a partner of a strategic consulting firm on enterprise software, digital media
and wireless technology. His career spans in academe, science, technology, philosophy and

business specifically hes also a consultant for startups. He is in the forefront of digital
technologies and networked games. He co-developed with IBM the first specification for
universal identity on the internet, invented the concepts of eMarkets, and co-developed the
foundational guideline for semantic web. He considers needs analysis as one of the most
powerful tools for innovators to understand the meaning of their products. This gave him an
interest on how Twitter acts to fulfill an impactful physiological need in our society. He
compared Twitter on the context of Abraham Maslows concept of hierarchy of needs. He used
Understanding the Psychology of Twitter as a case study to help innovators learn how to
better predict and invent emerging white market opportunities and also to explore the meaning
of Twitter and understand its meteoric rise.
In conclusion, several reasons why people use twitter is that Twitter has become one of
the substitutes to traditional ways of interactions and serves as a primary means of
communication nowadays which defines some of peoples actions and behavior. Klints article
was made valuable by the correlation of communication and Twitter from an educators view. It
also fulfills a part on holistic development and needs for human survival, belonging, recognition
and authentic being which is crucial to everybody, this could serve as a basis of stratetegies for
innovating products and understanding Twitter more as discussed by Ma. And its unique features
make it easier, simpler, and more comfortable for the users to express themselves. Twitter causes
and affects users actions and minds too by its mechanism on being spontaneous and open
according to Grohol. These three articles by the authors above were all useful in understanding
the Twitter phenomenon, each correlating on specific focuses.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Klint, Erin. "The Psychology of Twitter." Http://www.elearners.com/. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

Grohol, John. "The Psychology of Twitter." Psych Central. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.
Ma, Moses. "Understanding the Psychology of Twitter." Psychology Today. 27 Mar. 2009. Web.
20 Mar. 2015.