Twitter- to tweet, or not to tweet?

Hi anyone and everyone who may or may not be viewing this right now :)

My name is Aoife, and I am a 2nd year student of PR and Media in the Carlow Institute of Technology, Ireland.

I have to admit, I don't think I would be here by choice, but I have been given an assignment which requires me to blog regularly during the following weeks about online PR and communications. So that's what I'm going to be doing. Who knows, i might enjoy it and keep going after wards :)

So today I'm going to be talking about Twitter.

Good old Twitter. It was so lovely until it became popular and now its not so fun anymore.
Too many moaning teenagers complaining about how hard life is that their mam wont make their dinner earlier and that Home and Away isn't on this week, there for their life is over... my heart is truly broken.

Funnily enough, Twitter is a device that can be used both subliminally and consciously to promote and persuade the public into buying certain products, supporting certain brands/bands/companies/ individuals/ organizations and you may not even know why. In other words, for actual reasons other than just whinging about life.

Twitter is an online resource that alot of  individuals and organizations have been using to promote their product, be that clothing, food, music or a service, but are we really aware of what they are doing?

How many times have you been flicking through your tweet feed and suddenly gotten a craving for Oreo's or to go buy a Here's To Us T-Shirt or something like that due to something you subconsciously read ? Well I don't think I have (perhaps because I am a media student), but I found myself noticing a lot of friends doing it. Certain friends saying "Oh Simon Neill from Biffy Clyro? I was following him on twitter and he bought a pair of red RayBan's and got a new girlfriend, so I decided I needed a pair too." Obviously that's a complete exaggeration, my friends are not idiots, but small similarities occur such as buying the same brands as celebrities or from a site you follow, who follows you back... Is that not kind of strange?

Tweets are so small (140 characters per tweet) that if you are going to sell an product, you have to pack a punch in very few words. But this can be easily done if you have someone who has the know how!

My course actually delivers a twitter class on Wednesday mornings teaching us how to use twitter, talk about bringing PR into the 21st century.

I find myself wondering if in the next few years, after studying sites such as twitter, will I end up avoiding them completely ? Will there be so many people on there promoting stuff, people reviewing it after they have bought it and people fighting over whether its good or not , that I will actually avoid these sites I once loved?

I suppose thats the joys of technology for you!