When Humans of New York began it was catered to a specific digital format. It was designed to present a picture with an accompanying short paragraph describing the life and story of who was being featured. From HONY's inception as a project, Facebook’s format and digital space was perfect for Stanton's purpose. In today’s digital age where social media is not only common, but a normal time-killing device for all ages, Humans of New York has been able to thrive in ways Stanton might not have been able to project.
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For instance, the social media platform Twitter. Confined to 140 characters, tweets are meant to be short and to the point. There is no sugar coating or excess words on Twitter; you make a point then move on. For Humans of New York, a simple point is not trying to be made for its intended function an unlimited character count is necessary.
Interestingly, Humans of New York is just as accessible on Twitter as any other social media platforms, although, in a different manner. For HONY to still convey and stay true to its source material on Twitter “loopholes” have to be used. For example, one must first screenshot the original photo and text posted to Facebook. A screenshot is something that has only recently been invented and utilized. This shows what a changing digital age can accomplish for fan-driven Facebook pages such as HONY. On Twitter, you are allowed to add up to four pictures in one tweet and they don’t count against your character count. This enables users to share the entire original HONY post and add their thoughts in 140 characters or less.
This method allows people to take what was originally posted elsewhere and tweet it out to their followers. Twitter’s atmosphere and structure encourages strangers to follow each other if you like and connect with what they tweet. This has two outcomes, one good, one bad: (1) You don’t need to be a fan of HONY on Facebook to see posts, however, (2) you will only see posts on Twitter if you identify with the person re-posting an original HONY post, limiting the type and amount of stories you will read.
In one specific case, a Twitter user screenshotted a touching story of a gay man’s struggle with love and letting the wrong one go and retweeted it to all of his followers with a crying-face emoji. His original tweet contained pictures of the original HONY post with his added emotion via an emoji. It is now an original post on a different social media platform with HONY as a backbone. When taken into account the sensitive content of the HONY post, this not only suggests that the user that tweeted this was either gay or empathized with LGBTQ people, but that all of his followers were as well. So while HONY is more accessible through Twitter, only specific HONY posts will be seen depending on a person’s interests. Simply put, a fan’s specific experiences and life has exposed HONY to people that might not have been aware of it’s existence.