What Is Twitter? - TechTarget

Popular uses of X

One of the most common uses of X is to communicate with friends and to make connections with other people. These connections are built and strengthened when a user follows other user's X feeds and vice versa.

X is also used to share information quickly. Through tweets, registered users can share information about different subjects -- politics, sports, fashion, cooking, and so on -- with their followers. Followers are the people who follow an individual's or company's X account. Once they do this, anything that individual or company posts on X will appear on the follower's timeline and the follower can then share, like and reply to those tweets.

While tweets can be delivered to followers in real time, they might seem like instant messages (IMs). But unlike IMs that disappear when the user closes the application, tweets are permanent, searchable and public. There is also an option for users to protect their tweets so only their followers can read those them. Either way, X provides a platform for users to simultaneously broadcast a message to multiple other users. The more followers they have, the greater their reach and the more the people will read and potentially engage with them.

X users can also retweet - or repeat tweets from other users -- to their own X account so their followers can see the original poster's tweet.

Many people also use X to connect with companies or brands. This allows them to get the latest updates and promotions from those brands. For some users, X is the place to follow business leaders, politicians, sportspersons, and celebrities for timely news and insights.

X provides a convenient way to stay current on the latest news and events, including disasters. For example, X was the first source to break the news of the water landing of U.S. Airways Flight 549 in New York City's Hudson River in January 2009. The world first learned about this incident from a tweet and photo posted to X by Janis Krums, a then 23-year-old passenger on a commuter ferry that was trying to rescue the stranded passengers of Flight 549.

X users were also among the first to learn about other unfolding disasters, such as a plane crash in Denver and a terrorist attack on a hotel in Mumbai -- both in 2008. As with the Hudon River incident, here too one or more X users were live-tweeting updates about these situations from those locations as they themselves were experiencing them.

These uses notwithstanding, X is facing heat due to the growing problem of spreading misinformation and disinformation on the platform. In fact, X (and earlier Twitter) has been repeatedly criticized for allowing users -- particularly prominent users with blue verification badges and huge numbers of followers -- to spread misleading or incorrect information while facing minimal or no consequences. For this reason, it is advisable for users to double-check the veracity of any news or updates published on X.