Twitter has hit the mainstream news headlines in the
The problem with Twitter is that if you look at it from outside it really can seem like a complete waste of time – another pointless fad for geek fashion victims. This was definitely my opinion of it for some years. One or two friends had been urging me to join in since it launched. It was the persistence of one of these which eventually convinced me to give it a try. Before that, though, it was just wibble – like the worst aspects of blogging, only shortened and crystallised into gleaming gems of pointlessness. Who wants to know if you’ve just made yourself some tea, and you put too much sugar in it? Maybe a few close friends will be amused, but turning your daily life into a constant aphoristic stream of consciousness has little obvious value, unless you’re really famous and have a fascinating life. That certainly doesn’t apply to the majority of Twitterers.
The problem is that Twitter is harder to get your head round than Facebook. It’s a much more raw, single-purpose tool, and its description as “microblogging” is very misleading. Facebook is very obviously about friends and acquaintances. Once you’re linked (or relinked) on Facebook, the connection is permanent, at least for the life of the service. Your Facebook page is directly connected to your identity, and all the rest of the paraphernalia is built on that. It’s a tool for keeping in touch – as frequently or infrequently as you want. It’s a record of your life, or the bits you want to present publicly. If you post an album of pictures on Facebook it stays there, for friends to take a look at months later.
Twitter, on the other hand, is a constant barrage of updates and very little else. A Twitter posting can be lost in the stream within just a few hours. You could probably track it down if you focused on just the postings from the particular Twitter user. But that is not what Twitter is all about – and herein lies the reason why it’s hard to understand. It’s not about checking up on what your friends have been up to. It’s more like a mixture between RSS feed, online forum and instant messaging. Unlike blogging (and Facebook status updates), where comments are secondary, with Twitter they’re almost as important as original postings. The entire point of it is that insubstantial “buzz” of what people are talking about – be they close friends, people you hardly know but have a professional link to, or official news sources. Maybe even complete strangers, whom you feel like “Following” out of a pure whim.
I’ve only been using Twitter a few months myself – like this blog, I’m not exactly leading the curve with this particular technological development. But as someone who works from home more than I spend in an office environment, Twitter provides something very special. It’s like the banter I was used to during the near-decade I spent working at Dennis Publishing. Not the same – no digital medium has yet can come close to replacing real in-the-flesh experience. But as a means of keeping a finger on the pulse of the global conversation which builds our culture, it’s extraordinarily effective.
If you don’t get Twitter, it’s probably because you have enough banter in your social environs already, or just don’t want that much. Certainly, if you Twitter instead of talking to real people that’s a clear sign of digital addiction – just as bad as spending your time down the pub with your mates sending texts to other mates who aren’t there. But used as an extension of existing social life, rather than a replacement, Twitter is a truly revolutionary tool, up there with email, the World Wide Web, the printing press and breathing. Well, maybe not as important as the last of these, but close. Just make sure you avoid the Fail Whale.
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