by KELSEY OHLEGER
Intern Lifestyles Reporter

What do Appalachian State University Athletics, Ashton Kutcher and NASA have in common? They are all on Twitter.

Twitter is a social networking site allowing over six million users to share their answer to the simple question of “What are you doing?” with the World Wide Web.

But what are people doing that is so important to post across the Internet?

During Sunday’s baseball game against Wofford College, sophomore undeclared major Jason S. Wallace dove into the warm grass of right field to catch a soaring ball and end the first inning.

After viewing this play from the press box, Assistant Athletics Director for Sports Information Mike H. Flynn typed a quick 24-word synopsis into Appalachian Athletics’ Twitter account “GoASU” like he has at many sporting events since joining the site April 4.

“I just heard a lot about Twitter recently and decided to check it out,” Flynn said. “There are only a few schools who to do this, and we wanted to be one of the first to jump on the technology.”

Flynn has used the account to post anything from information about new football recruits to current golf rankings while focusing on two main objectives: to increase interest in Appalachian Athletics and draw more traffic to the Web site.

“If it we are at an event and something cool happens or something out of the ordinary, we’ll [post on Twitter] and say this just happened, check out details at ASU.com.”

While hardly advertising their liaison with Twitter, GoASU has gained 81 “followers” including the Oklahoma Sooners and the Broyhill Inn & Conference Center.

“It is still new for us and the role we use it for continues to evolve,” Flynn said. “We’re looking to get more staff members, coaches and even students athletes involved to expand the way we use it. The more followers we have means the more supporters.”

Along with Flynn, many other Appalachian members are recently engaging themselves into the world of Twitter, despite its three-year existence.

“I definitely think it is a good thing for us, but it is so new that people don’t really know what to do with it yet,” Assistant Director of Alumni Affairs Lindsay P. Sutton said of the site.

Sutton manages the account “AppAlumni” for the Alumni Association and joined only two days after “GoASU” posting Boone weather updates and “Random App Facts.”

“You can’t just ignore the social networking sites, it is where we know the younger generation is and that’s where we try to connect with them,” Sutton said.

But why does the younger generation flock to these social networking sites?

Twitter accredits their growing success to the simplicity of using a 140-character message to connect with others.

Lisa A. McNeal, Instructional Developer for Information Technology Services researches social networking tools and believes the phenomenon is fed by people’s desire of belonging to a group.

“People like being part of communities…and feeling connected to 
people who are important to us,” McNeal explained.

It can simply boost one’s assurance to link with similar personalities or become an alternative procrastination technique to Facebook, but using

Twitter also exhibits advantages particular to this technological age.

It can teach about networking, an increasing factor in today’s job market, McNeal said, who is teaching a course next semester titled “It's All Geek to Me: Using Social Media to Connect and Collaborate” to explain how it “can be used to discover answers and construct knowledge, both communally and individually”

JobMarketSuccess.com encourages “Twitterers” to build a network by posting interesting “tweets” and branding yourself within an industry.

This same idea of promoting oneself on Twitter is a technique many celebrities are using to gain “followers.”

Currently, celebrity actor Ashton Kutcher leads the Twitter rankings with well over one million followers, closely followed by CNN breaking news.

“Even though we may be separated by space and 
time, we can feel a bond when [we] read about what they are doing,” McNeal justified.

Local band Do it to Julia has gained overwhelming popularity throughout the high country, but plans to use Twitter to expand their fan base as they pursue their dreams of moving to Nashville this August.

After seeing musicians such as Dave Matthews and John Mayer use Twitter successfully, the band’s bassist Matt J. Rossino decided to join the site.

While one million followers, like that of Kutcher, is currently not an aspiration of the band, they do hope to gain close to 100 before the end of the semester.

“It’s a great way to keep in touch with the fans and let people know what we’re up to,” senior music industries major Rossino said.

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