Twitter is revolutionizing communications. In the last few months some of the biggest global news has been broken [5] on Twitter pages. News such as the Airbus A320 crash-landing [6] on the Hudson River, in New York, on January 15th. In Brazil soccer clubs have begun to announce new signings [7] on their Twitter pages. In last year’s US Presidential Election, Barack Obama and John McCain used Twitter to release news on their campaign trails. One of the secrets of Twitter’s success is that it is a blog / networking / messaging hybrid. For journalists Twitter is a kind of “drip [8] journalism” – meaning it helps release a large number of short stories very quickly to a large number of people. The largest communications companies in Brazil and globally have their own Twitter pages, releasing news and events. Pops stars, athletes and television personalities also use Twitter to communicate with their fans and the Press. 

How the site works

Large and small companies, teachers, teenagers, adults, housewives [9] – you name it, anyone can set up a Twitter page. Just go to http://twitter.com and sign up [10]. It is very easy and takes no more than two or three minutes.  After signing up, users [11] can use Twitter as if it were a blog, or rather - microblog.  Users can send as many messages (called Tweets) per day as they want to, but each message has a limit of 140 keystrokes [12]. The messages can even be sent by cell phone. Users can invite friends to start Twitter pages and to follow them. They can also follow their friends or any celebrity, company or institution with a Twitter page.  

Audio (voice) – David Hattan (American accent)

Matéria publicada na edição de número 50 da Revista Maganews, que também mostra a trajetória de crescimento do Twitter, comparado com outros sites.  E, em pequenos tópicos, um resumo de 4 gigantes da Internet:  Facebook, Orkut, MySpace e YouTube.

Vocabulary

1 the latest – a mais nova / recente

2 network – rede de comunicações

3 hybrid - híbrido (no texto = várias utilidades / variadas ferramentas / multifuncional)

4 massive – grande quantidade

5 news has been broken – notícias de última hora

6 crash-landing – aterrissagem forçada

7 signing – contratação

8 drip journalism – aqui =  “jornalismo em pípulas” / notícias curtas (drip = gota / pingo)

9 housewife – dona de casa

10 to sign up – se cadastrar / criar uma conta

11 user - usuário

12 keystrokes – caracteres