Describing Twitter

“What exactly is Twitter? Why should I care?"

In the time since I’ve embraced Twitter and defined my personal use case for the platform, I’ve had a number of conversations with people who have asked for my perspective on Twitter. In some cases, the people I spoke with had limited experience with social media. In others, quite the opposite. At times it is difficult to know where to begin. Covering the defining characteristics of the platform is straightforward enough for those unaware. Clarifying the range of implications is far more challenging.

One of the most underappreciated aspects of Twitter I have found through my conversations is the openness. The fact that the vast majority of users on Twitter openly share their tweets online creates tremendous opportunity. The nature of that opportunity is a function of what users choose to share, how they choose to interact with others and the mechanisms available to users for gaining perspective on the shared data.

Twitter’s latest mantra is that they are a “real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now." In this latest push to define themselves, clearly their emphasis is on real-time information. While this characterization may capture an important and significant set of use cases employed by many users of Twitter, I find the characterization of the network as an information network unsatisfying and limiting.

The Twitter platform has enabled a massive social network to form online and share whatever it deems relevant and interesting (within some constraints). Much of what is tweeted many would argue hardly constitutes information worth sharing. Yet even the most inane tweets can be viewed as purposeful if we view the network as a social network with actors who have a range of motivations driving their tweeting behavior. The nature of the social relationships within the network therefore has a significant impact on what information flows through the network.

What I find most remarkable about Twitter is the opportunity to learn from and form relationships with others that I would not otherwise meet due to constraints of time, distance and social position in the offline, physical world. When I first began tweeting over two years ago, I had no idea of the potential. As I began tweeting more often about the subjects that I am interested in, other Twitter users began following me out of the blue that were very relevant to me. They were not in my social sphere on Twitter and I had no idea they existed. Through the simple action of sharing, I created the opportunity for others to discover me through search on the global Twitter stream. Serendipity became my powerful ally. Indeed serendipity plus openness have been the ingredients for so many positive social outcomes through Twitter.

By sharing more than simply my professional interests on Twitter, I’ve formed more substantive connections with others and discovered similarities I was unaware of. Such sharing provides the opportunity for users to form a more complete picture of one another which impacts the nature of the relationships online. Within the last six months, I have had the opportunity to finally meet a good number of Twitter friends for the first time face to face. Invariably I’ve found that many aspects of their personality and character have come through the medium clearly. Even with the constraints of 140 characters, social attributes come through. Over time one can integrate those signals into a more complete and accurate picture. Such clarity makes the transition from online to offline all the easier given enough history.

As researchers discuss and build prototypes of new Twitter interfaces, one can see quickly the relative emphasis they place on the social aspects of Twitter in their designs. So many interesting possibilities remain to be explored. How can we build platforms that help relationships form which extend beyond information sharing to more complex forms of collaboration? Platforms that can leverage serendipity and openness to create more robust, collaborative social networks will stand to provide value in numerous contexts. That seems like a worthwhile outcome to strive for.