When To Use Twitter and When Not To

When to use Twitter? It is not just a simple case of not Tweeting at work when you should be working on those figures or sitting at home Tweeting when you really ought to be down the gym.

It has never been so easy to access social media but however prevalent it has become in our lives, many would argue that it is not the solution to everything. What is more effective in the given situation, Facebook connections or real contact? Text message or face to face? Email or phone call? With every new medium to come into being, it has to establish itself but it is up to the users of the medium to decide what it is appropriate for and what it isn’t. And inevitably, there will be disagreement.

Perhaps the most recent new medium to come into common usage is Twitter and the debate about when to use Twitter is still ongoing. You may remember Dan Hanna, the tweeting Groom, who tweeted during his Wedding vows, immediately sparking a debate. On one side of the coin was the argument that it made a mockery of the sanctity of marriage, on the other, the argument that it was his day and he could choose to celebrate it in any way he chose. A more recent example was the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardener in Utah and Attorney General Mark Shurtleff’s announcement on Twitter.

“I just gave the go ahead to Corrections Director to proceed with Gardner’s execution. May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims.”

Popular opinion in the subsequent debate is that this tweet is in poor taste and that Shurtleff has made a serious misjudgement on when to use Twitter. The other side of the argument is that Twitter is just another medium by which news can be announced and it is no less inappropriate than the news being transmitted through television or radio. And the fact does remain that Twitter is a medium by which people receive news.

The question of when to use Twitter and when not to will always come down to what people perceive as Twitter’s function. Twitter is a very simple concept that can be used to great effect by a variety of people; businesses use Twitter to promote their products or services, celebrities use it to keep in touch with their fans, and a variety of people and organisations use it to announce news. And if people accept that Twitter is a medium by which news is announced, they must also accept that news is not always pleasant.

This said, it is impossible to tell whether Shurtleff was posting a 140 character press release or a personal post. Freedom of speech is another factor attached to this debate and I suspect that the issue of when to use Twitter and when not to will remain a subjective thing.

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