Twrevoltion

Tweeting Twitterhea to your tweeps sounds like something a toddler would babble, but with the evolution of Twitter came a new language, Twitterese, incorporating the "tw" at the beginning of words to associate them with the social network site Twitter.  Micro blogs which people post are called "tweets", the people who follow your posts are known as your "tweeps" and people who decide to reduce their time on twitter start a vow of Twabstinence.

Definitions for these examples and many other twitterese words are found in an online Twittonary.

The language associated to Twitter is another example of the effects sites such as Facebook and the increasing popularity of blogging are having on our language.  In the same way that different parts of Scotland have different dialects, social media has developed its own dialects.  Blogging uses mostly a personal, and author determined way of communicating specific topics, thoughts and ramblings.  Blogs can be pictures, videos or written, depending on the bloggers preference.  Facebook uses various media to share information.  A facebook status can be long or short and are often personal snippets of information.  Twitter is microblogging, with a 140 character limit.  This can restrict the amount of information posted and the language used is often abbreviated, making tweets short and simple.

Twitter terms such as re-tweet are now making their way into the Oxford Dictionary.  10 years ago using language like "unfollow" was deemed grammatically incorrect, these days it is used in everyday speech.  Language always evolves, we don't all speak Shakespearean or like they did in a Jane Austin novel.

The twrevolution is simply adding to the modern English language and it will be interesting to see if it is still commonly used in 10 years time.

Internet Meme

 “Meme theory suggests that items of gossip are like living things that seek to reproduce using humans as their host” 

Taken from the TV show The Big Bang Theory, this definition describes the original meme, i.e. the transmission of an idea, gossip or behavior between people among a culture.  An internet meme extends on this idea by being a way of transmitting just about anything (videos, images, hashtags, blogs, websites) online often using websites such as Reddit and social media tools such as Twitter (hashtags) and Facebook (sharing) to turn a meme viral.
The one meme that really springs to mind is one released around November last year.  The NZ Transport Agency released a drink driving ad “Legend", aimed at young people. The video itself can be described as a meme in its own right, the day after it was released a friend of mine in Ireland linked the video to me through Wimp, an online video site, proving it had already gone viral.
Around the same time, people were campaigning for the general elections and several memes came out oriented at those.  My favorite was this one:

This started being shared around my friends on facebook, at the time the thread I shared had reached 1,828 shares, which is pretty big for NZ.  It takes the most popular part of the “Legend” advert and combines it with the negatives of John Keys election campaigns.  This meme became popular amongst young people, statistically least likely to vote Nats if they vote at all.  This example also shows how memes, and the internet in general, is a strong tool which can be used for publicity purposes and also to get the attention of a larger audience.