Twitter, the online social networking site (SNS), is at the core of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. This Internet-based software application enables users to sign up for free and communicate with others by posting text, hyperlinks and/or images from both desktop and mobile devices. Its simple functionality and usability encourages widespread adoption. As with other online software, the Twitter application itself is an enabler of its adoption, but the key to Twitter's success, we propose, is its sociability. The combination of functionality, usability and sociability produces successful online communities (deSouza & Preece, 2004). Twitter ought therefore to enable online communities.

The aims of this research are to evaluate the emergence of online communities in Twitter, and how users converge within those communities. With Twitter offering users the potential to'follow'many other users, communities are potentially dynamic, evolving and constantly changing (after deSouza & Preece, 2004). We critically evaluate the constructs of this theoretical framework to inform our empirical research. We go on to discuss our research methods and findings, presenting a conceptual representation of emerging groups' convergence via Twitter.