In case you still aren’t sure about Social Media and how many people are taking advantages of its power, here is one more reason to believe. The Global Language Monitor has announced that Twitter is the Top Word of 2009 in its annual global survey of the English language. Twitter, in case you don’t know, is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the authors’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.
According to the Global Language Monitor, which examines language usage across the world, “Twitter” beat out words like “Obama,” “H1N1,” “stimulus,” “vampire” and “2.0″.
“In a year dominated by world-shaking political events, a pandemic, the after effects of a financial tsunami and the death of a revered pop icon, the word Twitter stands above all the other words. Twitter represents a new form of social interaction, where all communication is reduced to 140 characters,” said Paul JJ Payack, President of The Global Language Monitor. “Being limited to strict formats did wonders for the sonnet and haiku. One wonders where this highly impractical word-limit will lead as the future unfolds.”
To read more about the top words, phrases, and names of 2009, click here.
