My last post got me thinking about what the hell Twitter is actually for. It’s strange that it did so well when nobody really knew, but it’s equally strange how long I spent rather enjoying it and not having a good answer when people asked me why. I think partly that’s because I’ve not really embraced it until recently. So here’s what I think is unique about it:
It’s different to instant messengers (IM) firstly because it isn’t instant, but mostly because it’s public: your tweets can (by default) be seen by anyone in the world. That means it’s less of a one-on-one conversation and more of a group chat.
It’s different to blogging because of the attitude: it asks ‘what are you doing’ and it won’t let you prattle on about even that for more than 140 characters. That means that most tweets you see are pretty trivial stuff you wouldn’t care if you missed but are, in the moment, of interest. It works best if you follow more people than you could reasonably keep track of, and dip in and out of the stream as if it were an IRC channel, so again it’s more like group chat, but…
It’s different to IRCÂ because of the ‘networking’ side of it: in a chat room (IRC is ‘internet relay chat’ and is a form of online group-chat favoured mostly by awful nerds) you see everything in the ‘room’ you’re in, but on Twitter you see what your friends are saying, even if they’re friends with other people you don’t know. If you have a good client such as Twhirl then you can also see what anyone says on a particular topic and anything anyone says that is directed at or that mentions you.
At any given point there are thousands of discussions taking place, and you should generally see whichever are relevant to you by topic or by friendship. You can chime in at any time, even with people you don’t know. To some extent people find themselves ‘grouped’ by a handful of well-known users that loads of people follow — mostly difficult-to-spell celebrities. The tag ‘#badmovieclub‘ was invented a few days ago because at 9PM yesterday Graham Linehan watched ‘The Happening’ with his Twitter friends, who generated something like 30,000 tweets in 86 minutes. They’re going to do it again in a month, probably with the 2006 version of The Wicker Man. I honestly don’t think Linehan could stop them if he wanted to. Phill Jupitus was working that evening, so he organised a second screening at midnight. I’m sure it could have happened without a celebrity endorsement, but it would have taken longer to spread. So Twitter can create events: for further example, this afternoon a friend of mine (I say friend; I’ve never met the guy and know him better by his Twitter username than his real name) went to an event called ‘#flashdate‘ organised on Twitter and met some people. Twitter can also make normal events more social: loads of people watched Barack Obama’s inauguration with a laptop and got live opinion from around the world as they did so. (The BBC have tried this a couple of times, but it worked a lot better on Twitter.) Even small events — I left Twhirl running while I watched QI this evening and got a couple of comments from relative strangers about that as it was on. And it was the repeat. This afternoon I had a look at the Guardian crossword, and because that’s a relatively common Saturday afternoon activity, it was eventually completed by a collaborative effort between hundreds of Peter Serafinowicz‘ followers. When he ran out of crossword he asked his followers to send more cryptic clues for him to solve. Anything you do that other people are doing, you can do together. Anything you are doing at all, if you’re Stephen Fry. Who knew being stuck in a lift was so interesting?
It’s also a great place to vent. You can shout at Twitter and if enough people follow you then you’ll get some sympathy (or told off) and you’ll never feel like you’re whining because you’re supposed to discuss pointless trivia on Twitter. Some companies even watch the feed to see what aspects of their products annoy people. At least once I had someone let me know that the latest version fixed my problem (bizarrely, they replied with a blog comment). I’m sure I get more done at work since I can tweet from Launchy.
It’s a strange thing, Twitter, but it’s a good thing to have around. Oh, and if you don’t already, you can follow me. I assume anyone reading this far down my blog might want to do that.
Tags for this article: Twitter
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February 16th, 2009 at 00:14
It seems that a small section of the #badmovieclub are having an impromptu viewing of Mission Impossible III, just because it’s on. This is what I mean: once you get a group with a common interest defined, just try and stop them being relentlessly sociable.
February 18th, 2009 at 16:03
At said flashdate I attempted to explain twitter to a couple of people. I actually thought I was doing quite well at emphasising the impromptu networking aspect, but then I showed them a twitter stream on my phone, and got ‘but this is really boring’ and the pity-the-geek look, which suggests they’d rather missed the point. I had to resort to ‘it’s hard to explain – you just have to try it’. Which feels like a cop-out, but, annoyingly, is actually true.
February 18th, 2009 at 16:06
Yes… Twitter is pretty boring 90% of the time. But then, so is BBC2. If you try to explain BBC2 to someone and eventually resort to turning on a TV and showing them they’ll say, ‘but this is just people I don’t know looking at houses and then not buying them’.
Question: why were there people at #flashdate who didn’t know what Twitter is?
February 18th, 2009 at 16:23
It was advertised on the radio that morning, and a fair few people dragged friends along generally. In this particular case it didn’t help that there was also a, erm, generational gap to contend with.
February 18th, 2009 at 18:19
While some people use Twitter to regularly chat about life’s little trivialities, it can be a powerful tool. I follow a lot of science bloggers, and when a story breaks I find out quickly and can get to writing on it. Similarly, questions can be posed to a large group of people and an answer come back immediately, or a rallying cry be sent out for something that needs mass action (e.g. Goldacre’s recent legal grief).
February 18th, 2009 at 18:26
It’s interesting to me how effective Twitter is at getting important stuff done. I would have thought that important calls to arms would just get drowned out by all the trivia and comments about The Happening, but now I think it’s the trivia that keeps people around long enough to see the important stuff. A bit like how people watch TV for trivia but it is (used to be) the first way you hear about any really big news.