Yesterday marked the fifth birthday of the most popular kid around: Twitter. After five years of popularizing micro-blogging, Twitter has changed the game of innovation in social media and has given us precious gifts such as the Fail Whale and the Charlie Sheen parody account.

For those of you unfamiliar with this social media tool, here’s a quick rundown. It was created by co-founders Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone from a 10-person startup based out of San Francisco. The site was officially born when Dorsey birthed the first tweet on March 21, 2006, stating, ‘Just setting up my twttr.’

People who sign up have the privilege of emitting their own blips of ingenuity, as long as they don’t surpass the 140-character limit. They can also ‘follow’ other subscribers whose tweets they find interesting or entertaining and effectively create a Twitter community for themselves.

Many of these users, occasionally lovingly referred to as ‘tweeps’ (which is a gross hermaphrodite born of ‘peep’ and ‘tweet’) create the content for Twitter and hand-select the content they’re fed.

While this little tyke has had quite a few growth spurts over the past five years as almost 200 million users have proudly become tweeps, many members of the technologically fluent generations have neglected to hop on the bandwagon.

A resounding complaint I’ve heard from Twitter-phobes is ‘I don’t get it.’  After a little prodding, the confounding factor is usually exposed to be the sheer constraints of tweets. As a friend of mine recently stated, ‘What could I possibly want to read about in 140 characters?’

Well, everything.

The creators of Twitter added a twist to the art of syntax and the dilemma of word choice by invoking the 140-character limit.  Periods, proper grammar and spelling have been all but eradicated (English majors — fear not, you can still use overly verbose and convoluted sentences stymied with semicolons in all other walks of communication), resulting in verbal mush.

Tweeting has become an art of cunning. Wit in 140-character snippets is difficult to achieve for many, which makes the witty tweets out there nothing short of pure gold.

It has also become an art of mutilation. While waiting in a train station recently, I overheard one fellow commuter complain to his friend, ‘Thanks to Twitter, my daughter’s vocab has been restricted to one-syllable words.’

Effectively, I’ve concluded that Twitter will yield a race of witty yet verbally stunted mutant social media tweeps.

With the number of tweets sent daily quickly approaching 2 million, the 140-character limit has proven to be a blessing. This restriction has allowed news and information to flow like never before possible.

Eyewitnesses can share firsthand accounts of events unfolding up to the minute; friends can share pictures of places and experiences; celebrities can raise awareness for a host of causes. And all of this information can be digested and further explored at the gym, walking across Manhattan or — dare I say it — in class.

Twitter and its enforced brevity has mutilated prior perceptions of information-sharing practices and effectively created a super highway of information surrounded by dirt roads.

And so I say today, we celebrate the five years and one day of Twitter’s short life that has resulted in tweeps, tweets, an excuse to type like you text and a new challenge to the practice of wit.

Jessica is an information management and technology and television, radio and film major who frequently tweets in class. If you have something to say that’s less than 140 characters, feel free to tweet her @j_lynn_smith. Otherwise do the old-fashioned thing and email her at jlsmit22@syr.edu.

Published on March 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm