The other day, a friend of mine (someone who should know better) asked me, “What’s the name of that really dumb site where everyone just posts what they’re doing?” My friend was referring to Twitter, which as I am coming to learn, is a simple yet very powerful communications tool.
When you log in to Twitter, you’re presented with a single prompt asking What are you doing? You get 140 characters worth of space to tell the world what you’re up to. Hit “Update” and your message gets posted to your profile and added to the positively massive public timeline, which includes all posts from all users.
For example, just before I typed this sentence, I posted this entry to Twitter:
Writing a blog entry about Twitter.
which you can see here at http://twitter.com/dkawalec
Pretty dumb, huh? At first glance, Twitter might seem somewhat self-indulgent or maybe even completely pointless. So, I can post what I’m doing to some website? So what?
Adding Friends
Twitter begins to show its value when you begin to follow other people’s streams. Not only can you view the posts of anyone else on Twitter, you can also add them to your Friends list and have their post feed intermingled with yours on your Twitter home page. As you add friends, acquaintances, or just people you think have interesting things to say, your home page turns into a vibrant real time stream of multiple consciousnesses.
Attracting Followers
Just as you can add friends and read all of their posts in your stream, others can add your posts to their streams. The people that add you to their friends list show up on your profile as followers. Followers are your audience. They are the ones who will be reading when you post something new.
Public IM
You can see that if someone is both a friend (you read their posts) and a follower (they read your posts), the two of you can communicate in what amounts to a kind of public IM session. Why not just use IM then? Because other people are reading the conversations too, and getting involved in them. These other people may have answers you need, points of view you never considered, or facts you’re not aware of.
For example, I first learned of the death of Jerry Falwell, not from the 11 o’clock news, not from CNN or even from CNN.com, not from blogs. I read about it on Twitter, when financialaidpodcast posted
Is it bad luck to say that I’m glad Jerry Falwell is dead?
With Friends
This is hands-down my favorite feature of Twitter. You can visit anyone’s profile (www.twitter.com/profile name) and click the With Friends link to see Twitter as they see it.
This experience is not quite voyeuristic — all Twitter posts are public, after all. However, you still get a sense of tapping into a view of the Twitter timeline that is specifically meant for someone else. This feature offers interesting insight into how other people are using Twitter, lets you see who might be worth adding to your friends list, or simply gives you the chance to virtually walk in another person’s shoes if only for a few minutes.
Microblogging
The ability to quickly publish tiny messages, and the fact that these posts are availble through RSS feeds, has led many to begin thinking about posting on Twitter (and on similar services such as Jaiku) as microblogging. I’m still getting comfortable with this term. First, because the working definition of microblogging seems to be, “what you do on Twitter.” Second, because I’m not sure that it captures what makes Twitter unique.
Microblogging implies something less than blogging. However, with its endless stream of posts, the stream-of-consciousness thought, and the near-frictionless interaction among users (made even more frictionless by the ability to add and receive new posts via phone text messaging and IM), Twitter seems to be, in some respects, a great deal more. It strips away the (yes, I’m actually about to type this) formality of blogs (with their “post/comment” and/or “post/counter-post” conversational dynamics), and leaves behind something more fluid and immediate.
On the other hand, I never feel like I have to catch up on what I’ve missed on Twitter. Posts on Twitter have an implied urgency (i.e., “This is what I think is interesting RIGHT NOW.”) to keep looking forward to the next post, the next discussion, the next idea. And the idea need not be earth-shattering. On May 18, it was a miserable and rainy in New York and I posted:
Today is a good day for soup.
I’d like to think that somewhere someone read that and thought, “yeah, soup sounds pretty good.”
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I wanted to add a few more real world examples that illustrate the value of twitter. The first group of twitter people that I started following are a group of traditional news media types on the East Coast. It was actually quite random that I started following them. When I signed up for Twitter, I didn’t know anyone else who had signed up. So I found some people who had made interesting comments in the public timeline.
I found newmediajim, started following him, then started following some of his friends so that I cold see both sides of the conversation as they twittered each other. I saw it as a tremendous opportunity to follow the conversation of a group of people who 1) do something interesting and 2) I would not normally have the opportunity to talk to.
I now consider newmediajim a true ‘twitter friend’. We have had a couple of conversations about his interest in “new media”. I learned of the Virginia Tech shootings from Jim through twitter. Being an NBC news cameraman, he was on his way there to cover the story. Jim was giving a first hand account of the details as they unfolded. Jim ‘tweets’ were short and frequent, breaking the traditional news media ‘sound bite’ model which made me feel more connected to the event.
Another interesting story is a connection that I made with a potential client. I’m a freelance web programmer. One of my twitter friends, lisapadilla, sent out a tweet asking if anyone could help here with some CSS coding. She works at an internet company where they are redesigning their website. The programmers who are developing the bulk of their new website are busy working out the ASP code on the web server and are running out time to do the formatting. Within 24 hours of Lisa’s tweet, I had talked with Lisa on the phone and given her a proposal. I don’t have the work yet (and may not get it), but that doesn’t matter because I’ve made this connection that I wouldn’t have made otherwise.
One final example, I made a connection with a college student in Manchester, England, nikf. He and I have had a couple conversations about topics related to javascript. As far as I can tell, that is about the only thing we have in common. Nonetheless, a true camaraderie has developed between us. It is an unlikely connection that was enabled by Twitter.
…and I only have 33 friends and 20 followers…and have only been using twitter for about a month. I can’t wait to see what happens when I build my network up to 100 or more twitter friends.
Hi, interesting article. I noticed you said you wrote a tweet about a blog post you were about to blog. I use ‘Twitterfeed’ for that, and just have the text “Blogging about:” used as the opener. It feeds a snippet to Twitter with a URL to the original post. Very handy.
I actually found you because I was using ‘Twits Like Me’ to try to find people to add to my friends list. We actually don’t have anything in common I think other than Twitter, ha. (I was looking for other artists.)
Regarding the use of “microblogging”. I think it’s a totally accurate term, because the tweets are archived, and you can post a badge to your blog’s sidebar showing your most recent tweets. I call my badge “Twitter Microblog.”
You may find it interesting, as far as social dynamics go, that I use Twitter primarily to send and receive text messages on my cell while I am in the art studio, in which I spend around 10 hours every weekday. Otherwise I’d be very lonely, but Twitter helps my studio to feel like a virtual cafe.
Again, interesting read, your post. My heart is all a-Twitter, too. :)
Victoria
I just joined Twitter, which I swore I’d never do, but that is how I found you. And all of these reasons that it is a cool tool. ;-)
PS I didn’t know about the With Friends feature. Checking it out…
PS I didn’t know about the With Friends feature. Checking it out…