As Twitter has surged in popularity over the past year, one of the most frequent questions is “What is Twitter?”. Case in point is my father, who was reading an article in the New York Times recently, and then looked up and asked me about Twitter.
There are lots of different answers.Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that lets you post messages of less than 140 characters; it’s a way to share ideas, news and things you find interesting; it’s a great way to waste time; it’s a way to communicate with friends in a way that’s a cross between instant-messaging and blogging; it’s a way to tell the world what you had for lunch..and so on.
I think that’s what makes Twitter so interesting. Even though the medium is limited to a handful of words, it can be so many different things to different people. Some people have embraced it as a personal tool while others use it for business. Some use it to raise money for charity, and many others have created cool and useful Twitter-related applications.
To me, it’s a fascinating medium.
If you find this as interesting as I do, you may want to check out the comments to a blog post on PressThink in which Jay Rosen asked for suggestions on how to explain Twitter to “Eggheads”.
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2 Comments
Seems like I've noticed Twitter being mentioned a lot more in mainstream news just in the last few weeks. With 70% of Twitter users joining in the last year, I think more and more people will become aware, and Twitter will be less intimidating for non-bloggers than starting a full blog. Should be interesting.
Whenever a friend or family member asks me 'What is Twitter?' I always send them this video http://adjix.com/2bfh
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