Lately, Twitter has been all over the news; it’s become quite a phenomenon. Unless you’re plugged-in enough to have experienced it yourself already, you might wonder just what Twitter is and why you might care. Should you hop in and join the crowd?
Twitter is, as my headline alludes, a microblogging service. On a regular blog we can “talk” for as long as we like, making posts short or long to suit the subject and the author. On Twitter, each post is limited to 140 characters.
That’s 140 CHARACTERS, not words.
Here’s an example, posted by @Powells earlier today:
Three authors will be at our downtown store for their new books published by Akashic Books. Please join us. http://bit.ly/QWALt
(That was 128 characters.)
The idea behind microblogging is that short, simple posts encourage people to post because they can do it so quickly and easily. Instead of writing long posts that take time to think out and proofread and such, you share little 140-character thoughts throughout the day. This also makes Twitter fit very well with mobile devices, such as iPhones, Blackberries, and cell phones. These devices are all about short, quick communications (think text messaging).
Some people literally post about what they’re doing (”Having a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. Yum!”), while others post to share interesting links or other information that they find as in the Powells example above. For some of us, it’s a combination of these things with occasional “conversations” with friends thrown in.
Twitter is not all that conducive to conversations, really, which is partly why some people are stumped by its popularity and wonder at its usefulness. You can reply directly to someone and they will (probably) eventually see your reply, but conversations are not threaded so that related posts appear together. All posts appear chronologically, with the most recent at the top. The more people you “follow”–more on that in a moment–the faster new posts will scroll down the page.
The thing that I’ve found interesting about Twitter–because I, too, was skeptical about non-conversational posts–is that you can actually learn a lot (about a particular subject maybe, or a person you’re following) just by popping in and scanning your Twitter home page from time to time throughout the day. It doesn’t take a significant time investment to begin to see value in it, which may be part of the draw for a lot of people.
A few words on followers/following: As of this moment, I am following 128 people on Twitter and have 109 people who follow me. Some of these people are friends–people I know in real life, or friends I’ve known for a while online–some are celebrities, and others are people I’ve found by looking at other people’s lists for interesting individuals to follow. Some I’ve found because they followed me first. My following list leans toward writers, editors/agents, bloggers, and people local to the Portland area.
If I find that someone I’ve followed doesn’t add value to my list, I’ll eventually unfollow them, but in general I find that the variety of people on my list makes it interesting and entertaining and, surprisingly often, informative.
My advice? Give it a shot. Sign up and poke around, looking for interesting people to follow. Give it some time, because it does take a while to establish an interesting list of people to follow and to, well, get the hang of it. It can be hard to let go of the idea that we should somehow be having meaningful conversations. Twitter IS about interacting, but it isn’t particularly about conversing.
If you do decide to give it a try, feel free to follow me. I’m @michelletoich and I’ll most likely follow you back as long as you don’t appear to be an auto-Twitter bot!
There are details I haven’t covered here (like what those @ symbols mean), but I don’t want to overwhelm with too much information in what is meant to be an overview article. If you’d like to know more about Twitter, comment and let me know! (Or click on the “Send us your thoughts” link on the right to send us an email.)
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