Page 331 - Wordsmith A Guide to College Writing

Twitter’s appeal extends much further than just news

and advertising, however. Celebrities fueled the site’s

popularity in its beginning. Ashton Kutcher was famously
in a race to one million followers with news

organization CNN. The movie star posted videos and blogs

appealing to his fans to create accounts and follow him.

In response to his eventual winning of the race, Kutcher

donated 10,000 mosquito nets to charity. Justin Bieber,
Britney Spears, and Diddy all tweet their followers,

sometimes even replying to their followers. Most

recently Charlie Sheen took to Twitter, setting a record

for the fastest time gaining one million followers.

Users are now set up to get real-time updates from him
and follow his (some would say) spiraling life.

Twitter took the simple concept of a status update and

built an empire around it. The site may have started out

as a social network; however, it can now be considered
in some aspects a social media outlet. The constant flow

of information provided, from real news to entertainment

to updates from friends, makes the site both appealing

and useful.

Questions

1. Write the thesis statement below, underlining

each major point.