The limits of Twitter

Tuesday, 01 March 2011 03:58

Written by Danilo Araña Arao

What can you do with 140 characters? If you’re international celebrity Lady Gaga, a lot. A simple endorsement from her recently made a young Filipino-Canadian’s dream of stardom come true.

Last February 17 at 7:15 p.m., @ladygaga tweeted: “Can't stop crying watching this. This is why I make music. She is the future. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG0wi1m-89o” She was referring to the YouTube video of 10-year old Maria Aragon who sang a cover version of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.” Her short endorsement went viral as it got retweeted by more than 100 people as of this writing.

Lady Gaga’s celebrity status was indeed instrumental in making Maria an overnight sensation. Lady Gaga, after all, has 8,464,779 Twitter followers as of this writing.

Definitely, Maria should be thankful to Lady Gaga, YouTube and Twitter for the worldwide accolade she is receiving right now. A simple tweet can indeed make a lot of difference, provided that it comes from a person who wields power and influence.

Assuming that Maria prefers to be famous by imitating the Western standards of singing, this is indeed a fine example of Twitter giving her a quick ticket to success. One can only wish her the best of luck to whatever dreams she wants to fulfill.

Then again, the misuse of micro-blogging like Twitter is also apparent as one reads the exchanges of certain personalities both in Philippine politics and entertainment.

Just recently, Sen. Gringo Honasan and singer Jim Paredes had an interesting exchange via Twitter regarding each other’s role at the people’s uprising at EDSA that happened in February 1986. Paredes accused Honasan and other EDSA personalities of taking advantage of people power and then staging a coup d’etat during the Cory Aquino administration. Honasan obviously took offense and accused Paredes of living a comfortable life abroad while many Filipinos suffer in abject poverty.

In the recent past, many online users were entertained by the “Twitter war” between celebrities Mo Twister and Ogie Diaz. This had to do with the latter’s “blind-item” article which referred to a TV host who got kicked out of a show. Mo felt alluded to, prompting him to rant via Twitter which then resulted in a series of exchanges between the two protagonists.

Since it is practically impossible to provide proper context to one’s 140-character message, a person’s tweet can only do so much to explain one’s point. It is not surprising that their respective Twitter wars did not resolve anything. They failed to raise discourse to a higher level since micro-blogging deprived them of explaining in full detail what they had wanted to convey.

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