I was in a workshop on earlier this week where the facilitator asked how many of us were on twitter.
[Cue sound effects: Crickets chirping, grass growing, pins dropping]
Most of my colleagues hadn't even heard of twitter let alone used it.
As a user and fan of twitter, I took a stab at trying to describe what it was and why I use it --
- It's a social media platform
- That allows you to connect on a real time and personal level
- With friends, colleagues, experts, interesting thinkers
- By encouraging short conversation bits
- That you can follow through your phone, your website, your feed aggregator, other social media
But perhaps that was too in-depth. Perhaps I should have said what twitter allows me to do:
- Connect with other like-minded "twits" to exchange ideas
- Find out about (so I can participate in) real-world meet-ups
- Be challenged by open-ended questions and socratic statements sent out into the cosmos
- Get real-time information on new tools, features, applications from users rather than marketers
- Find out what friends, colleagues, and experts are doing and interested in
- Ask questions, get answers
But this is just the basic stuff. Twitter is so much more.
But even twitter doesn't try to describe itself (alas, must we rely on the Wikipedia definition?)
So, I'm putting out these questions to my colleagues who use twitter ...
What is twitter?
Why do you tweet?
