Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn all have distinct uses. They were each created not as direct competition for the other but to fill a specific niche in the social networking world. Twitter was originally started so that people can post 140 character messages. People can also attach photos or articles, but the main focus is the message. Instagram on the other hand, highlights the photo. It is a place for posting pictures and while it allows you to caption your pictures, the main focus is the picture. Facebook allows you to share almost anything. The highlight of your post can be a message, a picture, an article, a video, or a website link. It is more versatile than the two aforementioned sites. LinkedIn is to connect people in professional circles. The site highlights connections with people in your field and is great for job searches. While there is overlap between the four social networking sites, they each have a specific function.
For my research project I chose to focus on twitter, zeroing in on the 140 character limit and how it has lead to the degradation of language. I think it is an important topic, and extremely pertinent as twitter's base continues to grow. In the past, people shared things in writing, privately via letter and publicly via printed news articles. In both these cases, although in the public sense more than the private, there was always a sense of importance to the language in addition to the content. In today's society, however, with "new media" sources giving a voice to everyone, people "put things to print" so to speak much faster than before, this creates a lack of editing and a society who not only overlooks minor spelling and grammar mistakes, but a society who has forgotten the poetry of language and the importance of word choice. The next step for me is to find research that discusses the link between twitter and the degradation of language, as well as res...
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