The document discusses three articles about social media networks and microblogging platforms like Twitter. The first article analyzes Twitter user data and finds that most posts are directed at friends and that more active users have more followers. The second article defines microblogging and finds that Twitter users use the platform for information sharing, seeking and relationships. The third article examines how Twitter users appropriate the platform beyond its "What are you doing?" question through status updates. The introduction provides context on social networks and differences between spoken and written language. The analysis then examines examples from the corpus of tweets to identify characteristics of spoken and written language use.

1. LITERATURE REVIEW
Huberman, Romero and Wu through their article “Social Networks That Matter: Twitter under
the Microscope” discuss the issue of how relevant is a list of “friends” is to members of the
network. It is mentioned in the study that scholars, advertisers and political activist see massive
online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the
propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics and viral marketing. The dataset used in this study
contains 309,740 users with average posts of 255, 85 followers and 80 followees. Out of the
number of users, 211,024 posted at least twice and they are under the category of active users.
Twitter post or known can be categorized into direct and indirect posts. The findings show that
25.4% of the posts are direct which means they are directed to friends, mostly. The findings also
show that users who received attention from many people and users who have more followers
tend to be more active in posting their tweets. This shows that the number of friends is the driver
of Twitter user’s activity.
The article “Why We Twitter: An Analysis of A Microblogging Community” by Java,
Song, Finin and Tseng focused their study on microblogging phenomena, particularly Twitter.
As a start, they define microblogging as a new form of commucation where users describe their
current status in short posts. Microblogging mainly acts as a medium to talk about daily activities
and to seek or share information. Furthermore, microblogging systems provide a light-weight,
easy form of communication that enables users to broadcast and share information about their
current activities, thoughts, opinions and status. Microblogging intentions varied from daily
chatter, conversations, sharing information to reporting news. The authors monitor the public
timeline of their samples for two months which result in 1,348,543 posts from 76,117 users.

2. These users shared intentions of information sharing, information seeking and friendship-wise
relationship.
In the article “Twitter: Expressions of the Whole Self - An Investigation into User
Appropriation of a Web-based Communications Platform” written by Edward Mischaud
discusses the use of Twitter, its features and the people who uses it. As defined by Mischaud,
Twitter is a web-based communications platform combining Instant Messaging and SMS that
enables subscribers to its service to send short ‘status updates’ to other people. In this article,
Mischaud seeks to investigate the extent to which users of Twitter responds to the ‘guiding’
question ‘What are you doing?’. From this question it is possible to find out whether users of
Twitter goes beyond this particular question, by deviating to other ‘updates’ or vice versa. By
analysing the results obtained, Mischaund concluded that the majority of Twitter users observed
are appropriating the platform beyond “What are you doing?”. This article also discusses about
the society’s role in shaping technology and the influence a technology’s design may have on
how it is used. This research of Mischaud contributes in the understanding of the spoken and
written language of the Twitter users. A line can be drawn between the two by applying
Mischaud’s method of study.
INTRODUCTION
Social network is a mechanism for mediating distal interaction among people which allows
people to follow the lives of friends, acquaintances and families and the number of people on
social networks. One of the examples of social networks is Twitter. Twitter is the first
microblogging systems that made its first appearance in 2006. Microblogging systems provide a
light-weight, easy form of communication that enables users to broadcast and share information
about their current activities, thought, opinions and status. Twitter users can stay in touch and

3. keep up with friends regardless of where they are and what they are doing. People update their
status or known as tweets, with a maximum of 140-characters, in the form of either spoken or
written.
Spoken form differs from written form in several ways. The first one would be, spoken
form is less formal than written form where language conventions are broken such as beginning
sentences with but. Spoken form is much more dynamic and immediate, therefore precision is
not given much attention. In addition, spoken form is more communicative where tone, intention
and meaning. On the other hand, written form gives extra attention on grammar and language
conventions. Furthermore, written form present ideas in a precise, well-ordered and presented in
a more sophisticated way. This shows that written form is more articulate and sophisticated than
spoken language.
The objectives of this study are to identify the differences between spoken and written
language by analyzing the corpus available and to study the factors that might lead to such use in
language. In other words, the corpus which is the compilations of the twitter will be analyzed in
terms of its use either in written form or in spoken form. Some of the factors that lead to the used
of those languages in the corpus will be discussed in details.

4. ANALYSIS
From the corpus that has been analyzed, it is found that there are some differences between the
spoken and written language used by the respondents. For example, in spoken language most of
the respondents are among artist/public figure, women, and men. An example of spoken
language produced by an artist can be seen from the extracted line “I just saw the most beautiful
young girl. About 5 years old. Lovely hair, lovely smile, lovely face. A stunning girl. She has
albinism” and “With tears I drive home... Good to do a little or a whole lot of reflection. Will be
busy today... Take care everyone!” Artists tend to use spoken language in order for them to
attract attention from their audiences and also to share their opinions or tips. Meanwhile, an
example of spoken language by women can be seen through this line “Soup too salty? Instead of
adding more liquid, add raw cut potatoes, It'll absorb the salt. Discard the potatoes...” and “Left
leg needs a massage :( Aching :( ”. Women in this case are more emotional, they prefer to use a
lot of emoticons. Another example of spoken language produces by man can be seen through
these two examples of sentences “I will be offline for the rest of the day doing some hardcore
packing. Take care y'all! May peace be upon you~” and “Been reading all tweets...thank u thank
u so much for all ur wonderful wishes!!! Sending our love to all out there.. :)”. As for men, they
use spoken language to show their state of appreciation.
Other than the spoken language, status updates or tweets by the users can also be found in
the written form. This denotes that the tweets do not contain any spoken language criteria such as
emoticons or punctuation marks. Written-form tweets are usually produced to give advice or
motivation usually in the form of quotes. An example can be extracted from the corpus available
where Person A tweets “Knocking other's success doesn't make you more successful. It just
makes you a hater” or Person B “It’s better if someone doesn't recognize your existence rather

5. than a person that knows you exist and yet gives you no worth.” The language used here can be
categorized as a written language as it is very much formal, usually exist in books of quotes or
even if it is used in a verbal-communication, people use it as a reference. Especially users who
tweet quotes, these are established words where it is printed again and again in different sources
thus it has authority on its own. When one uses this in a communication, it is known that the
words are not a product of the speaker but a quote in itself. Therefore if twitter users update their
status by using quotes or words of wisdom, it is categorized as a written-form of tweet. It is not
just formal but more articulate and sophisticated.
This idea however, does not apply to all the quote-tweets of the users because there are
some users who produce their own sayings. With the intention of giving advice, motivation or
words of wisdom, it is not possible that users can produce their own. An example of this is when
Person C tweets, “Twitter is a river that we share. It flows us forward together. Don't pollute it
with hatred, disrespect and rudeness.” This is a piece of advice given by a user who wishes that
all Twitter users would not abuse the real usage and intention of Twitter. This advice can be
categorized as a written-formed tweet as it is formal and very much sophisticated.