On Twitter
Since I started Tell Me All About Me, the order of my Google search results changes almost constantly. Like a pile driver digging into the ocean floor, Internet users searching for “Heather Rasley” are digging into the web, sometimes bringing the dregs of my identity to the top.
Among the forgotten statements I’ve made is a quick quip about Twitter from September 2007, posted to the One Day on the Internet feature for The Morning News. Here’s what I said…
Check Twitter to read Tweets by my—not friends, not contacts—“followy people,” maybe? I only know two of them from real life, and only one of those two actually updates. Remind me why I’m on this thing, again
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Notice that my issue wasn’t with the service, but about the type of community and level of conversation that was happening there. At that point, I had been on Twitter for about three months, and was sick of needing to constantly explain what it was and why it was worthwhile when attempting to convince my friends to create an account and update it with interesting stuff. I believed in the service, but was frustrated by the absence of a vocabulary with which to describe it, and its position as something only of use to the tech/geek community.
It’s almost comical to think about that version of Twitter now, since over the past two months it’s become a central communication point for me and a number of friends and contacts. As of this morning, I follow 100 people and am followed by 120. Of those that I follow, I in some way “know” (have established outside one-to-one communication with) about half, and the other half is comprised of people and organizations that I enjoy and look up to. It’s now a pleasure to read my “followy people” stream.
Twitter has also led to the creation of a new friendship that couldn’t have existed without it: I met this awesome chick face-to-face recently when she was here visiting from San Fran. I’d never have known of her if she hadn’t decided to add me to her contact list one day. To me, that’s a sign that the type of community and exchange that’s happening there is becoming strong and meaningful.
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Still, the vocabulary issue isn’t gone. In fact, it came back to haunt me at the Sousveillance Culture Conference this past weekend. During my presentation, I talked about “status updates” on Twitter and Facebook as a form of data that could easily be tracked, with potentially detrimental results if in the hands of the wrong reader.
After a few mentions of this, a group of 40-something women in the second row began to giggle. I looked out at them and realized that they had no idea what I was talking about. In a quick attempt to clarify, I paused and provided a definition of Twitter that was something like:
“A group feed of short-form blog entries that answer the question ‘What are you doing?’”
What kind of grade would I give myself on that description? EPIC FAIL!
“Feed”? “Blog”? My definition was still all wrapped up in the technobabble that had confounded them in the first place.
They ended up leaving before the Q&A, and I can’t help but feel like the obscurity of my language had something to do with it (though I’m also open to the possibility that I’m completely solipsistic and they just had to leave).
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But despite it still being sort of hard to explain, Twitter is pushing through to the masses.
In the past few weeks there has been much discussion about whether or not Twitter is or ever can be “mainstream.” Why that’s an issue of such great interest, I’m not entirely sure. There’s plenty of evidence that, mainstream or not, Twitter is now a valuable communication tool for a diverse group of contributors, and a site of meaningful exchange of ideas and information.Thanks to Twitter, students are being freed from jail, the web is turning into summer camp, and inanimate objects are telling us their feelings.
There are also dozens of apps that make use of Twitter info to show us data in a new way, Twistori (which uses Summize) being among the newest and sleekest.
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In short: There’s no need to “remind me why I’m on this thing” anymore.
I’m there because I believe it’s a space in which truly groundbreaking developments in the social web are taking place. It’s a bridge between the real world and the virtual, and new planks are being thrown across each day thanks to its foundation.
In his recent comments at ComicCon, Douglas Rushkoff made the great observation that in the early days of the web, going online was an invigorating experience. You hopped on, did your thing, hopped off, and felt energized. Now, it’s a brain drain. So much information. So many tasks. So much STUFF.
Twitter has recaptured the energy and magic of the early days of the web. It’s not just stuff. It’s people. Sharing real thoughts about real events in really new ways.
It’s not quite a chatroom, it’s not quite a blog. It’s something else. And it’s exactly that mystery and ambiguity that makes me excited to log on in the morning.
