Image from Stef Landowski.
I have been meaning to write a post on Twitter for months now. Not because it doesn't get enough press, it gets plenty, but because I wanted a way to explain to some of my friends and family why Twitter is so interesting to me and what it means for the web (PC & mobile).
Sometimes people are able to look back at history and see with a clear eye when they finally knew an idea was going to be big, when it became clear that a product or company or candidate was going to take the cake.
For me, that process with Twitter happened in November of last year, with the events of 26/11, as Indians refer to the Mumbai attacks. CNN, Fox and even local Indian news stations were offering very limited, sometimes conflicting, reports of what was happening on the ground in India's financial capital. Meanwhile, people witnessing the events first hand were twittering. This was a news feed not even the Drudge Report could scoop.
By January, we had the Miracle on the Hudson, where one of the first photos was captured by a Twitter user and shared via Twitpic, and subsequently picked up by numerous media outlets.
On February 24, during President Obama's Address to the Nation, Congressmen, Senators and their staff were tweeting away their critiques of the President, each other and Nancy Pelosi, as well as musing about what else was on TV.
I have been a registered user of Twitter since August of 2007 but like my initial experience with Facebook, I didn't initially grasp all of the applications of a platform like this until a critical mass of friends and bloggers I followed began to use it.
That has happened at a rapidly increasing rate over the last six months, culminating in massive media attention following the capital raise Twitter completed in February.
So, for the uninitiated, here's what Twitter does, and why it is a revolutionary platform, not just another social network.
1. Twitter breaks news stories before anyone else - (Mumbai, the Hudson landing, the Amsterdam Plane Crash last week)
2. Twitter allows celebrities and companies to reach their fans and customers in new and intimate ways - (I have re-engaged as a fan of Dave Matthews, following tweets from his travels around Louisiana, after having stopped buying his records years ago).
3. Twitter enables people to share and comment on content in an opt-in, progressive disclosure format, you can get a taste or description of the content without having to read the whole story (I have tweets pushed to me via Digsby and just click through on the links that I am interested in reading or responding to).
4. Twitter enables instant crowd-sourcing of ideas, opinions and recommendations - (in San Francisco's marina? Need a restaurant recommendation? Just ask your followers.)
5. Twitter is a low-friction, low-intensity social network for people to communicate with their existing friends or find new friends that share the same interests in an non-intrusive, non-threatening way.
6. Twitter removes technology barriers to using the Internet and joining the global digital conversation by equally enabling users of both PCs and those with just mobile phones at their disposal.
This to me is one of the most interesting aspects. Twitter removes as much friction as possible from the process of using social media. It's easy to join, easy to post on, and easy to consume. It's asynchronous, and doesn't require a lot of time or effort to maintain or monitor. And It doesn't involve the social hassles of Myspace and Facebook where friending and tagging can turn your personal life into an online school yard of exposed relationships and unwanted photos. You can follow or be followed without knowing or caring who's following you, and without any stigma attached to connecting with people you don't already know.
Anyone can use Twitter, and use it very easily, whether you're a techie, a grandmother or a blogger in Madagascar.
And now your moment of Zen: Jon Stewart explains Twitter.
