EAST WEEK #25 ~ TWITTER IS CHANGING THE WEST & NOW THE EAST

Almost everyone is joining the twitter revolution. If you are in Hong Kong/ASIA reading this article you may be wondering what this twitter business is all about? In the US and other parts of the world everyone now a days seems to be “tweeting” including myself.  Twitter is basically a social networking platform that asks you one question, “What are you doing?” and you must answer it in less than 140 words.  You then “tweet” what you are doing and everyone online that is following what you are doing… will now know what you are doing, what you are thinking about, what you may be feeling or who you may be talking to at the moment through twitter. It’s fun. It’s genius. It’s a new way of communication!

I started using twitter one year ago when it was introduced to me by my long time mentor MC Hammer. Many people don’t know that MC Hammer is not just a world famous rapper, but is a social media guru and expert in branding. He told me twitter would be the new way to communicate… he was more right than I could have imagined.

Today www.twitter.com is the fastest growing social media and networking website on the Internet. What is twitter?

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others’ updates, known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to other users – known as followers – who have subscribed to them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees. (wikipedia)

There are a few reasons why I love twitter & why you should too…

1.    A new way of receiving news & updates ~ right now I am currently following over a hundred friends and family, pop icons, news sources, politicians, sports casters, authors/pastors, and other people/groups that I personally like. Every time they “tweet” what they are doing, thinking about, or provide links to articles, videos and pictures I get it all in chronological order on my twitter page. I can even tweet back and respond to those I am following… It’s a new way of receiving your own personalized news, but not in a paper, but on twitter!
2.    A new way to search information ~ before if I wanted to search for specific information I would “google” it. But now, I am able to search on twitter.com about any topic I am interested in, but it doesn’t give me dated information, it gives me what people in my network are talking about on the subject I am interested in – in real time. That is powerful.
3.    A new way to promote a cause ~ what I love most about twitter is that you can utilize this open platform to communicate a personal message to those who follow you to get behind what you care about, who you are and what you do. Every day, I start off with a Bible verse to encourage those who are following my twitter. Then I tweet an inspirational quote. Throughout the day if there are articles, links, news, ideas or random thoughts/things that I like…I tweet it. In this way I am able to build a brand, a cause, a movement behind what I believe in and influence those who follow me. Remember ~ a leader is not a leader unless he/she has followers.
4.    A new way to communicate truth ~ the best way to hear about something is not from the media, the TV, the radio, or the news, the most reliable source of information is to receive it from people you trust, directly from them. Twitter puts the power of communication back into the hands of ordinary people, who give you their honest perspective…not a false perspective created by media or others who have their own agenda.

Twitter is a new platform to not only communicate to your friends by finding out about what they are doing and letting them know what you are doing, but Twitter is a revolutionary tool for leaders in our society to lead through social media and in a weird way “relationship”… theory says we are all six degrees of separation apart from one another, with twitter, I think we are only one “tweet” away. The power to create perception by the media is no longer in the hands of the elite corporations, media companies or chosen few, but the power to communicate truth and the opportunity to receive information has just been put back in the hands of the people, that is, those who are making the most of this new communication tool called “Twitter!” … let the twitter movement rise in Asia!

Follow me on twitter… www.twitter.com/jaesonma

God bless,

Jaeson Ma
www.jaesonma.com

For the Chinese version of the article please click here.