Twitter - #today #inaNUTSHELL

Twitter is the 8th most visited site in the entire world!  It has over 500 million users and handles over 300 million tweets per day. Anyone can join, but you do not need an account to read other tweets.  So who's using it? It is popular among people of all ages, businesses, celebrities, athletes, and more.  Even the President of the United States has a Twitter account!  Check out the Infographic below to discover more about this popular social networking site (Note: the details below are from March, 2012 and may be somewhat dated.  Afterall, 4 months can seem like decades in terms of technological innovation):

Twitter is often used as a tool for civic engagement and has played a major role in organizing several social uprisings from around the world, including the revolts in Egypt and Iran, and the US Occupy movement.  Check out the video to learn more about spreading messages through Twitter:

Twitter has caused a major controversy surrounding the Olympics.  It centers around "Rule 40," which limits athletes from creating any tweets that name their sponsors that are not officially recognized by the Olympics. For instance, US marathoner Ryan Hall cannot tweet "Thanks Asics for helping to make my Olympic dreams come true," because Asics is not an official sponsor. On the surface, it appears the IOC is acting to protect the Olympic sponsors that paid lots of mulah to be able to put their label all over anything associated with the Olympics.  However, smaller sponsors are necessary for athletes to manage the costs and burdens of their elite training.  Without the smaller sponsors, there would be no Olympics.