Twitter In today's technological world, we are increasingly interconnected to the Internet with our smartphones and tablets. We're one tap away from reading the daily news, two clicks away from the current weather forecast, and one voice command away from updating our status on our favorite social network. The ease of the Internet and the ability to talk to real people from all over the world is amazing. With over 7 billion Internet users in 2012, 230 million actively use one of the most popular social networking sites on the Internet: Twitter. Twitter is the latest and apparently the most popular social network among teenagers. According to Business Insider, 26% of teens consider Twitter to be the most important social network. With over 554 million registered users, users find their social connection to the digital world in Twitter. What exactly is Twitter? According to wikipedia.com, Twitter is "an online social networking and microblogging service that allows users to send and read tweets, which are text messages limited to 140 characters." Essentially, Twitter is a fast and direct social network, definitely something to appreciate. Founded in May 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass, Twitter will become a worldwide phenomenon and capture the attention of millions of people. The idea, as Wikipedia describes, came about when Dorsey wanted to create an SMS-type service where he could communicate with a small group of friends. Originally the codename was "twttr", a name Evan William gave to the project that was "inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS shortcodes" ("Twitter"). Eventually the name twitter was born, based on the site's function, which allows short bursts of... half of paper... to update people that water has been found on Mars. In January 2009, people were alerted that a plane had landed on the Hudson River 15 minutes before any news outlet could break the story. On July 6, President Obama became the first president to hold a town meeting online and received over 110,000 tweets. Fans of a celebrity or public figure can communicate, in a sense, personally with their idol. People have gotten full-time careers thanks to Twitter, and “social media manager” is now a job position. A cyberattack on Associated earlier this year targeting President Obama caused its stock value to plummet by "134 billion almost instantly" ("Twitter"). With a predominant presence in our digital world, people sometimes forget the power of Twitter. Works CitedTwitter. (2013, July 12). Wikipedia. Retrieved December 8, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter