The Power of Retweets

After our discussion on Wednesday around the question “Will the revolution be tweeted?” I started thinking about the way in which I utilize my Twitter account and other forms of social media. I would say that I am a moderate user of Twitter and Facebook; I post updates and occasionally articles, but I mostly use them to see what other people are doing.  While it is interesting to see where friends are and what they did over the weekend, I tend to pay the most attention to articles that my friends have posted. If they have actually taken the time, as minimal as it might be, to post an article, they have to be passionate about it to some degree, and odds are if they’re my friend, I will find the post interesting as well. This is a time saver for me because I don’t have to sift through pages of articles to find ones that pertain to my interests. And the same goes for Twitter. I noticed that I tend to pay more attention to posts that have been retweeted by the people I follow. If a note on Twitter was interesting enough to my friend that they wanted to share it with others, I am most likely going to get something out of it. Actually, most of the people or things that I follow on Twitter I found because someone else repeatedly retweeted their posts. While some people might think that it is easy to over look ideas posted on Twitter or Facebook, they really can be powerful tools. I’m sure I would eventually hear about important current events or things happening on campus by word of mouth, but Twitter and Facebook allow that information to be communicated instantly and provide me with access to a wider range of information that I might not be privy to otherwise.