#NewToTwitter

It has been over five years since the first time I posted something on twitter and yet my number of tweets is less than 50, this is because I had never really been interested in twitter until now when I’m having to do this for school assignments. It has always been very clear to me that there are many advantages that come with having a twitter account and with twitter in general but I am just now seeing the benefits of twitter firsthand.

One of the greatest advantages of having a Twitter account and following news accounts such as The Associated Press (@AP) which I follow, is the speed in which you can get the news, one does not necessarily needs to follow the account posting the news but with the retweet  function you can share this tweet with all of your followers. An example of this is when I retweeted a story they tweeted about two half-brothers who were just released from prison after spending 30 years for a girls slaying they “committed” in 1983. News stories like this always catch my attention as I’ve always been interested in cases were the persons convicted are later found not guilty.

An interesting tweet worth mentioning is a tweet from Valeria Jarrett (@vj44), Senior advisor to President Barack Obama (@BarackObama), which the mere president retweeted which showed a graph and stated that female unemployment was falling to pre-recession leves, this is very interesting because if it was not because I follow the president on twitter this would be something I would probably never hear of.

It amazes me how you can get informed on important topics on twitter in so many ways; a good example of this is a tweet I saw from Pope Francis (@Pontifex) whom I follow, with a simple tweet like the one he posted on June 23rd which reads “Let us pray for the Christian communities in the Middle East, that they may continue to live in the land where Christianity was born” he not only encourages his followers to pray on tragedies like this one but also creates intrigue to want to know more of what’s happening in those places and get informed. I am glad I will get to engage more with twitter thanks to my classes this semester and this will definitely become a habit and a tool that I will use in my favor.