Teenagers are notorious for their use of the most novel and fresh social networking sources. Little to their realization, this demographic is closely monitored by highly trained marketers that exploit and maximize profits off of ignorant masses. These marketers have discovered that in order to survive the tedious and disheartening prospect of high school, students require the upkeep of large groups of friends in order to keep up moral. These marketers have put out MySpace and Facebook, which have all been able to hold the attention of youth nationwide. Now the latest, rapidly-growing trend is the 4-year-old Twitter, a “microblogging” site that lets users post “tweets” of 140 characters or less to their “followers” by mobile phone and join a worldwide feed of Twitter users. Its luminescent interface and winged mascot are rapidly captivating the attention of Ames High School students. “Twitter is for cool people,” said senior Melissa Munkvold, “I’d rather be on Twitter than Facebook because it’s only status updates and not other junk.” Munkvold is only one of many students that have found Twitter’s interface simpler and “cooler”. Myspace lost its traffic when its clunky, cluttered pages were outmatched by Facebook’s cleaner simplicity. Speculators say Facebook’s millions of apps and group invites may soon meet a similar demise in the wake of Twitter’s increasing popularity. Jake Whalin, a junior notorious for making 1,000 tweets in a 3-month period, hasn’t entirely left Facebook for Twitter. “I got bored with Facebook. There was too much drama and too much chatting,” he said. “I just sign on to Facebook to check birthdays.” Because of the easiness of being able to tweet via mobile phone, a sense of “always being online” is established which leads to stronger comradery in friend groups, regardless of how meaningful the content of the tweets actually are. Studies have shown that the majority of Tweets are nonsensical gibberish. Wahlin, on Twitter known as “Hipster515”, says, “I enjoy tweeting about hipsters, Paris Hilton, and the happenings in my life.” Twitter is also a window into the life of favorite celebrities. Wahlin says, “I enjoy Twitter because every morning I get a good morning from Katy Perry, Paris Hilton, and Beyonce.” Twitter has potential not merely for teenagers and celebrities, but also for people. “Spence needs a Twitter so he can give students priority, Ames High updates at luxurious, instant speed about the next MegaBowl.” says Whalin. Spence Evans, a local school principal, does not yet have a Twitter. He resorts to updating his status via school intercom. While effective, this method is found, by anonymous sources, to be archaic. Some would pass off Twitter as nothing more than a repetition of the Facebook’s status update feature. “You can do so much more on Facebook,” said senior Kris “Ezquimeux” Stow, a local Ames High rapper. “I like Facebook better. But still follow me: @Ezquimeux. Love me, I’m the bass god.” Ezquimeux’s recent publicity with his latest single, “The Future is Today” is greatly made possible by Facebook’s updating features, where the majority of students still conduct most of their social networking. Twitter allows for the instant posting of spontaneous inspiration and thoughts by texting with a mobile phone. The advantage Twitter has over Facebook is that one can subscribe to another person’s tweet feed and only get tweets. On the other hand, Facebook has so many features that subscribing to another person live feed via text results in a bombardment of messages of a varied content due to the bulky amount of features in Facebook.