About Andrew Phelps
Andrew Phelps is a WBUR reporter and the host of Hubbub, a new blog about Boston.
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What’s Twitter? Here, I’ll show you
Prologue: There are a lot of explanations of Twitter on the Web. What follows is not intended to be exhaustive. But I encounter this question so frequently — What is Twitter? I don’t “get” Twitter — that I would like to collect my thoughts on the subject, cohesively, in one place. I hope for this entry to evolve alongside my understanding of the phenomenon.
To understand Twitter is easier than to explain it. The first thing I would suggest is not to be dismissive; dive into it, and Twitter will start to make more sense. Stick with it, and you’ll come to find your Twitter “voice.” Also, you might go through fits and starts at the beginning of your journey, abandoning the service for a time and then returning with a vengeance. That’s OK. (Remember when Facebook was new?)
OK, so what is it? Basically, Twitter is microblogging. It’s a way to share short bursts of wisdom or insight with a potentially huge audience. Conversations form around these short bursts and the effect is viral. One person replies to you, and then someone replies to that person, and so on. Meanwhile, the people engaging in conversations are discovering other people on Twitter they may find interesting. Twitter’s advantage over “conventional” blogging is that people “follow” you (effectively, “subscribe” to your updates), and you can see at once who and how many are interested in you. (And this is how “microfame” develops.)
Another critical thing to understand: Twitter is not Facebook. Twitter is open (unless you choose to “protect” your updates, which most people don’t do), whereas Facebook is closed. Facebook is intended as a service for you to stay in touch with your friends and loved ones, and so users must “request” access (“friendship”) to other users’ profiles to share. Your Twitter page is open for the world to see (that is, unless you protect updates), regardless of whether you follow people or they follow you.
I use Facebook to connect to friends. I use Twitter to connect to strangers. Also unlike Facebook, Twitter does not actually exist. It’s a “cloud.” Let me try to explain. Twitter is just a service upon which applications are built. Even the basic functions of twitter.com are part of an application built on top of the Twitter framework. Users all over the world use a myriad of different programs and platforms to engage in these microconversations.
For example, on any given day, I use TwitterFox and PowerTwitter (Firefox plugins), Twitterific and TweetDeck (Mac applications), and Tweetie and TwitterFon (iPhone apps) to tweet and view my friends’ tweets. You can also subscribe to updates via text message, but I don’t do that. Because Twitter is open, any developer can build a program that “talks” to the service. So, unlike Facebook — a utility that “lives” at a Web site called Facebook.com — Twitter is like Jesus: everywhere and nowhere.
Why do journalists care so much about Twitter? How do we make money with Twitter? I’m still formulating my answers to those questions, so check back soon.
1 Comment on ‘What’s Twitter? Here, I’ll show you’
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Andrew, thanks for this write-up. Very useful. And it’s good to see you blogging again!