“The principle of homophily says that people associate with other groups of people who are mostly like themselves” (Yardi & Boyd, 2010). Twitter is a convenient online method for people to share brief and informal statements with “followers” or those interested in hearing what other have to say. With Twitter, a user has the ability to set up an account that will follow other users who have information that is engaging to that user. Others may choose to follow that user to create a spider web effect of information sharing. But when does this form of interpersonal communication become over-sharing?
When a “tweet” is sent out that another user relates to in particular that tweet may become far reaching because it has the means to travel through layers upon layers of other users by a means of being forwarded. This is a powerful feature Twitter has created to inform masses about one significant topic. Because of Twitter, users can “speak” to other users who would otherwise not be in an immediate circle of communication, and Twitter offers the ability to overlap industries, social boundaries, and media, which also very significant when sending a message out.
However, it is important for a Twitter user to remember that once a message has been sent out to the Cyber World, it can never be retracted. This means if there is a typo, an incorrect word, or if the message was intended for a different audience, it’s out there on record forever. This can be very damaging to the reputation of the sender and proactive pubic relations effort may be far larger in the social media realm than standard media because of the fluid effect that Twitter messaging has. An example of this is when Haley Williams of the band Paramore tweeting a provactive photo of herself to her thousands of fans when the image was intended to be texted privately to her boyfriend. While she can delete the posting from her page, it could not be retracted from cyberspace.
There is a fine line also, between an informative poster and an over-poster. It is important to know what a user’s followers prefer to hear about. Breaking news and other informative tweets are important, but users interpret news in their own lives to have different levels of importance. For example, Twitter handle “itsthemilkman” just posted, “I'm hungover and i'm pretty sure i still smell like king crab.”Itsthemilkman has posted over 2,300 tweets that are similar in content to his 82 followers, which tends to make this user a hypercommunicator. When adding hundreds of other over-sharers to the mix of the informative tweets by users with Twitter klout, it’s easy to understand how the hypercommunication of Twitter can become a bit overwhelming. Add this single method of online communication to daily emails and other social media platforms, and a user has his hands full of more content that he knows how to handle.
References
Yardi, S., and Boyd, D. (2010). Dynamic Debates: An Analysis of Group Polarization Over Time on Twitter. Bulletin of Science,Technology & Society 30(5) 316–327. Retrieved February 3, 2011 from Sage Publications database http://bst.sagepub.com/content/30/5/316
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