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Twitter Fills a Communication Void

Posted by Nick O'Neill on December 30th, 2007 7:32 PM

When attending the Web Community Forum a few weeks back I decided to start using Twitter on a regular basis after seeing how many conversations I was missing out on. I suggested that I might even be addicted to Twitter. Today, Matthew Ingram delves a little deeper into what is taking place when we use Twitter. Twitter provides a unique platform for communicating and has its own rules, the same way that chatrooms and IRC channels do.

I can opt to spend ten to thirty minutes responding to someone via a blog post or I can take ten to thirty seconds posting a response via Twitter. If you look at my volume of Twittering versus blogging in the past few weeks, you will see that my “tweets” have been much more frequent than my blog posts. Previously, I found philosophizing about Twitter to be a waste of time because I thought Twitter was a waste of time.

Twitter isn’t a waste of time though. It enables me to maintain communication with those that I have “weak ties” to (as Matthew Ingram points out). It has also helped me foster relationships with individuals that I may never have been connected to. In the world of digital communication, Twitter will soon rank among email, blogging and instant messaging. It’s a public chatroom that I can choose who the participants are. There’s no better chatroom online.

Is my obsession with Twitter unnecessary? I know plenty of my readers are not active Twitterers. Am I crazy?

Posted in Social Media
  

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 8 Comments

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    Hey Nick,
    No you're not crazy. Or if you are, then there are many of us in the same boat with you! I met you at the Web Comm Forum & that event was fun to tweet from.

    Twitter is a weird bird, but it grows on you as you use it & follow more people. Yesterday I asked which airport to use when I fly to Anaheim & rec'd 3 answers. My Twitter gang helped me fix the SEO problem on my blog & found a new problem. Both are fixed. One person even commented a month later that the problem was nicely fixed. :) And my sister's Wordpress business started as a result of Twitter & this past week I've sent 3 people her way. I sold the iPhone I won on Facebook on Twitter. That took an hour!

    hmmm looks like I should write my own blog post. :) When my sister wants to know what I'm up to - she clicks on my twitter address & reads my posts. (She doesn't have a twitter account, but prefers to stalk me :) ). @jowyang sent about 20 new followers my way today, so I look forward to my new friends. :)
    Crazy, uh huh, but definitely fun. I work from home, so Twitter is a great place to hang out.
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    oh and @jowyang had pointed to this post on Twitter (that's how I got here)
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    I totally agree Nick, I started twittering towards the end of last summer just because I like to try out any site I can find...at first I tweeted once a day or less by just responding to the question "What are you doing?" so my updates were things like: 'going to class.' 'Going to a movie.' ZzzZzzz...

    It was only after I discovered that the more people I connected to, the better I could harness the community of twitter: now if I have a quick question or idea about just about anything, I have instant access to a sort of online focus group! I love that twitter is like a wide, selective chat room...but you don't have to schedule people to participate, they throw their hat in the conversation ring whenever they see a topic that interests them in the midst of the ambient twitter updates.
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    To echo, I also got here from @jowyang tweet despite the fact that I have this site on my RSS reader...I've noticed that I tend to see links in twitter to those posts in the blogoshpere that are the most interesting before I even see them updated in my reader! So I guess twitter has become my community-powered RSS reader!
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    I think I first heard of Twitter last year, while following MacWorld's coverage. It seemed like a crazy fad to me, so i didn't pay too much attention.

    Then, I started following Nick's entrepreneurial adventurers through his blogs... and I got infected by Twitter! lol

    I use it mostly to communicate with my youth group, and it's working VERY well.

    Thanks, Nick!! =D
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    Twitter is many many things.

    Certainly it's primarily a community. It is also a medium.

    It's actually also a massive human search engine - I ask a question and my community of friends responds.

    I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to see how they monetize this thing....perhaps they already are (market research?).

    Follow me here: http://www.twitter.com/corbett
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    Duncan Riley has a good post on Twitter and Omnipresence over at Techcrunch:

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/30/a-sign-of-...


    I commented:

    "Twitter is an amazing service as long as you have a network. Most people don’t understand that you need to dive into Twitter and immediately start interacting…to begin, it’s more about being responsive than being a content producer. Twitter would do itself a world of good by making sure people understood this and helping pair them with contacts and subjects they could respond to. Users see value in Twitter when their UX becomes participatory. Like text messaging you must send to receive"

    http://www.leveragingideas.com
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    As I found more and more people that I followed in other ways (blogs, facebook, etc.) it became more interesting to see what went on in their minds on a daily basis. Also, because of the close attention that people pay to Twitter (many respond back nearly instantly), it's a great way to interact with folks you might not get a response back from any other way!

    In other words, the sense of online community has been enhanced, in my opinion.

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