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April 03, 2007
twitter is...
According to the home page at twitter, twitter is: "A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!"
I've been on twitter since the beginning of February and what twitter means to me has evolved during the past couple of months. While I still feel twitter on an overall basis contributes to the social fabric of the internet, at the moment twitter feels like the bar from the TV show "Cheers" - where everyone knows your name and at times also feels a lot like the dialog you might hear on a hi-tech CB Radio channel.
This in turn lead to my wondering of what twitter meant to those who were also using it.
So earlier today I asked friends on twitter to fill in the blank: "twitter is..."
This resulted in the following 25 replies:
bartknows: "Twitter is the API for people as autonomous mobile application environments.
Becky McCray: "Twitter is a way to keep in touch with new online friends, share info, ask questions, get tips of interesting reads, and promote brand me."
Bill Cammack: "twitter is fun"
Bill Deys: "addictive"
Bob Goyetche: "not a cure for short term memory issues."
Brittney Mason: "Twitter is my lover"
canine: "twitter is........an esoteric thought mashup."
Cathleen Rittereiser: "Twitter is 10/16/69; Game 6 of the 86 World Series, Lindsey Nelson. Catching a t-shirt from Mr. Met T-Shirt launcher. Twitter is Blogging turned upside down. Twitter is Real time Collective Conscious. Twitter is my weakness."
Chris Saad: "twitter is... collective consciousness"
Deb Schultz: "twitter is...blogging on crack"
Doug Haslam: "Twitter is..productive productivity killer"
heiko "... highly addictive."
Jay Hayworth: "twitter is ... habit forming?"
Jeremy Pepper: "... hitting the wrong audience"
kosso: "Twitter is like going around leaving post-it notes everywhere you go, for people following you to read."
Lisa Padilla: "twitter = a cloud tube of random listeners, sometimes useful for questions to which you need an immediate answer about 1 hour ago from web"
Loic Le Meur: "buggy but coolish"
MisterSmee: "Twitter is a serious distraction from this paper I'm writing!"
Michael Bailey: "Twitter is where people can talk about buying jets alongside others talking about paying rent, and they all get along together great! ;-)"
Phoneboy: "Twitter is how I deepen my connection with the blogosphere. Twitter is old time IRC on your mobile phone. :)"
Ross Rader: "twitter is the new email. fscking twitter"
shunpike: "twitter is soda pop from the unfiltered stream of consciousness"
Sooz: "Twitter is ... connectedness. about 1 hour ago from web"
Steve Smith: "Twitter is to blogs what instant messaging is to email."
The Fem Geek: "informative"
I wonder how Robert Scoble would answer this question.
Tags: twitter, Jeff Pulver
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Posted by jeff on April 3, 2007 09:54 PM | Permalink
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Comments
Twitter is "micro-blogging". Distilling the essence of a blog entry down to 140 characters. Either that or posting lots of tiny fragments. Twitter is also rapid link sharing. It is following people who are interesting to you. It is *easily* posting from multiple devices (web, IM, SMS).
Posted by: Dan York at April 4, 2007 11:42 AM
Twitter is telepathy.
Posted by: James Corbett at April 4, 2007 08:54 AM
annoyingly addictive
Posted by: mindcaster at April 4, 2007 08:42 AM
Twitter is a toilet door in the most coed toilets ever.
Posted by: Henry Michel at April 4, 2007 08:36 AM
What Kim M. Bayne's said. You've got to try it to see if it fits you. I think:
Twitter is .....dangerous if there is no filter between brain and fingers.
Twitter is ...... how i know what is going on with folks I think are interesting, who I may or may not know,
but I feel I know, because I know what they are doing from moment to ...to moment...to moment.
Posted by: Grace at April 4, 2007 02:24 AM
a great example of a flow application.
Posted by: Stowe Boyd at April 4, 2007 02:14 AM
Twitter brings group text beyond natural groups.
Posted by: Bernie Goldbach at April 3, 2007 10:54 PM
Twitter is...undefinable.
Folks can stand outside the store window, point at the mannequins and gawk at the new fangled fashions until daybreak. They're not going to truly understand how well Twitter fits until they walk through the door and try it on for size.
~ Kim M. Bayne
http://mincedmedia.blogspot.com
http://www.twitter.com/mincedmedia/
Posted by: Kim M. Bayne at April 3, 2007 10:44 PM
Jeff, love the CB radio analogy. Goes to show you, everybody's twitter experience is different. I use it to keep a pulse on the players in Tech. Gives me a bit more insight on how people think than reading someone's blog.
-Jeff O'Hara
http://blog.zemote.com
http://www.twitter.com/zemote
Posted by: Jeff O'Hara at April 3, 2007 10:25 PM
"hfx_ben" sez, "Twitter is ... kinda like seeing everybody in the world with a piece of toilet paper trailing behind them from the sole of one shoe."
Posted by: ben tremblay at April 3, 2007 10:18 PM
"bentrem" sez, "Twitter is ... like whales singing, but cyber ... tele-tweets"
Posted by: Bernard D. Tremblay (ben) at April 3, 2007 09:55 PM