Creativity

The article "Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Users" from The New York Times explains how new media allows users to further innovate the technology that they are using. For example, everyone is familiar with the @ feature on twitter and other platforms, which allows users to directly refer to someone. When you put @ in front of someone's name, Twitter creates a hyperlink to that person's Twitter page. I was surprised to learn that this feature actually originated from the users themselves. Before Twitter adopted this feature, users would put an @ symbol in front of someone's name when talking about them. Twitter saw how popular this was and decided to make the @ feature that creates a hyperlink to the users account. Users also came up with the name "tweets" for twitter posts. The idea for the hashtag feature also did not come from twitter employees. In fact, twitter initially rejected the idea for the hashtag feature when it was proposed by a user. However, users themselves started using the # symbol as a way to keep track of tweets from the same event. Twitter realized that this is what users wanted, so they now hyperlink hashtags, so users can click on it and see all the posts that have that hashtag. Twitters use of its users ideas to innovate the social media platform to make it what it is today is proof that new media allows its users to have a role in the innovation of the technology they are using. Companies do not have to rely on only the ideas of their software developers, but can also gain inspiration from millions of people that are using the technology and finding ways to alter it to their liking. This opens up the door for endless possibilities of what new media can become.