Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Twitter, But Were Afraid to Ask

Mosaic found at HONGKIAT

Well, Twitter is no longer the best "next" thing. Twitter is actually THE HOT topic of the day, alongside Barak Obama, Swine Flu, and Rihanna's buttocks.

But what the hell is Twitter? Why is it so hard to understand and harness after being around for almost three years?
We all know the general concept: What are you doing?
Can anything be simpler than that?

This is the charm of it all. Unlike my blogs, their premise is clear and straightforward. In 140 characters you are supposed to tell people what you are doing at any given time. You just have to create an account in order to begin picking up virtual friends. Either you "follow" or you be "followed". Each time you post what you are doing, the message ends up in a stream of text available to your followers. You can also send direct messages between friends, and reply posts. All  messages are sent via the Twitter page or via add-ons for your desktop, browser or mobile phone. The main difference with an Email service or instant messaging is that you don't have to create groups or anything like that to send a single message to a massive amount of destinataries at the same time. How easy could it be from Gmail or messenger to send a message to a thousand or more recipients? Hmm, wait a sec, isn't that spamming?

In an attempt to defining the undefinable, "cnshck" from the Iconshock forum stepped to the bat and took a good swing at it:

"Personally, even if I'm just a recent user, it seems to me that Twitter is just a little bit more convenient way (with its downsides too) to do things that were already possible years ago. If there wasn't a Firefox extension for it, I wouldn't probably use it that much... Twitter is like a chat client combined with an RSS feed. Useful... And overwhelming too..."

Twitter is becoming rapidly an interesting aid for corporations to increase traffic and create new and innovating marketing strategies. Even companies like Southwest airlines use their "tweets" to provide customer support. I also have stumbled upon smaller companies that are using Twitter as a company intranet. Because you can send messages ("Tweet") from your cellphone, you can use twitter to keep coworkers in touch regardless of their location.

The twitter phenomenon is really going nuts right now. There are hundreds of new uses emerging each day at an overwhelming speed. Does anyone want to share any bizarre findings? I've seen weddings, couples fighting, sex escorts, and others. Twitter revolves around an idea so simple, yet so boundless that if you wanted to, you could stop speaking forever and communicate exclusively with the aid of  the little blue chick.

Proofreading...

I have just read my last paragraph, and still don't feel I've defined Twitter in a satisfactory way. Why is this so difficult?. I'm sure that all the Big Mac's that have entered in my system diminish my mental flow in some way, but still it is not entirely my fault. The incapacity to really explain what Twitter is, comes from its almost ridiculous concept. It's so dumb and so absurd in a way, that you find it almost impossible for such idiocy to be a real working thing.

SO... what the hell is it?

Tweeter can't be compared fairly against an instant messaging system or an E-mail because they are not in the same ballpark. The latter add the capability to send files and don't have character count restrictions, two HUGE reasons to consider them totally different.

Is it a forum? Not entirely. All the posts add up to an endless stream of non organized 140 character thoughts. No categories, no Topics. The messages don't even have titles. It could be used as a real time forum if you build a group of friends of exactly the same needs and knowledge interests, or you could use a client like twitterdeck and organize your friends by groups.  But I think that employing Twitter as a forum is forcing the app to do something for what it wasn't designed. Twitter has a more immediate sense than a forum, but lacks entirely the power to create real extensive debate with long thoughts and support of videos or images. I've seen people trying to do forum's using "tweets" as just teasers for links with larger comments, images, videos and blogs. But sincerely I think its stupid to use twitter for this. It's like using a nail clipper to cut your hair just because you can.

So, is it like a web chat? Almost. We are getting hotter. But no, it isn't. Its definitively slower that the usual chat room, and the feel is completely different. When you enter a chat room, you enter exclusively to meet people, therefore, its an activity on it's own. The concept behind Twitter is different, because it was conceived to be an app to tell the world what you are doing besides Tweeting. You "tweet" while you work. You "tweet" while you party. You "tweet" while you kiss your bride. Soon you will tweet while you tweet. Twitter and web chats do share the same simplicity for finding friends out of unknown people. Think of them as the cyber equivalent of going to the park with a very cute dog. (I know you all know what I mean.:)

Ok, its not an Email service, not instant messaging, not web chat. Maybe a FSS feed reader?... NO! You can however, use twitter only to send links of your blogs and web sites, but I think it is certainly a boring usage of the app. There are already tons of apps specifically to read Feeds, and they all do it well. People on Twitter won't befriend you if your "tweets" are just a bunch of cold links to your site.

Hmm... Could it be used as a blogging platform?... ABSOLUTELY NOT! unless of course your blogs are two lines long. Tweeter does not have bold letters, formatting of any kind and because your "tweets" enter an evergoing stream, the chances are that maybe they would never be read.
"Tweets" although, can be an aid for a blogger, as our contributor "gswd" writes:

"I incorporated a blog tweeter (TweetSuite actually) so that when I post a new blog entry, it automatically posts it to my twitter account. It also includes a Tweet This link on the blog post. I don't know if that actually has increased any traffic to my blog or not, but hey 1 additional visitor is 1 additional visitor."

Tweeter can do almost everything, in the most stupid and crazy of all senses. It´s like saying that you can do anything with a pencil. Both assertions are true. You can do and make anything you can imagine with a pencil, specially if you're Mcgyver. But... fuck, the point I'm getting at is so absurd and obvious to me that I just don't know what else to say...

At the end of the day, turns out defining Twitter is like giving a definition of a spiral or describing water. (ask someone to give you those explanations and you will understand what I mean)

Some reflections about life in the new millennium.

Twitter is designed to be a more human and personal app, aimed to share intimacy with known and unknown friends around the globe. And to me, that is both its merit and its flaw. It tries to humanize something that just can't be human. For many users around the world, Tweeter can become almost exclusively the only way to participate in the lives of the people they care. Contemporary society demands tasks that one way or another deprives us from time for social contact. As I write these lines, I am thinking about the many friends I had in college, and how I have lost track of almost all of them. Twitter by definition has a much more presential and immediate way than any social network out there to keep updated on the life of your peers.
Zandor, a very active net surfer further explains:

"I know much more about friends of mine on Twitter than friends on Facebook. Or in real life for that matter. I know who’s having a shitty day and who’s not. Who’s in a playful mood and who’s drinking and who’s working. I don’t know who’s getting laid, but give it time. It means I become a participant in my friends lives occasionally even if that participation is just Greg getting a cup of coffee."

The above phrase is in a way an acute resume of our actual state as human beings at this particular time. I think few literature and films got close to predict the level of de-humanization we are going through right now. Our body and our innate capacity of speech, are rapidly being displaced as our primary means of communication. Why do we prefer to "tweet" our mom rather than just give her a phone call? When I read all the specs of Tweeter and social networks in general, I can't help thinking... hell, can't we do this already with our voice and a phone?

Us Humans are designed to need social interaction as a mean for survival. Our brain needs such stymulus as expressions on other peoples faces, the smell of their skin and the sound of their voices in order to check satisfactory social interaction. What you can learn about another human being through a mere handshake CANNOT be replaced by millions and millions of "tweets". I feel that not having the time to sit down calmly with a friend for a cup of coffee or to take a long walk with a coworker are symptoms of a lifestyle that is sucking us dry without us even noticing. The absence of total human contact is just something that we are not designed for, and I personally think its a huge cause of social distress and individual frustration. Dear reader, just stop and think for just one second. How much time do you spend daily actually doing what you really want to do? Ever made the math?

Does anyone out there remember the time before Internet? What did you do back then when you needed to look up an unknown subject matter or the correct spelling of a new word? How did we relate to friends?

Because of the Internet, now days there are THOUSANDS of tasks that are ridiculously more productive than 10 or 15 years ago. Just as the Pearl Jam song, we do the evolution baby!. Sure we can translate any word from any language in seconds, when before the net we had to go to our book shelf or to a public library. Of course we can stay in touch with our friends and relatives, regardless of which part of the globe their at. Things like video chatting and google maps seemed like Star Trek fiction ten or fifteen years ago. To our children, all these technological improvements would be obvious and natural, and would invariably determine their concept of the world around them. (Unless of course we lock the kids in a basement for twenty years with nothing but an old turntable and the complete Jethro Tull collection on vinyl.) But... do we really need ALL this stuff? Is everything truly an improvement on our lives as human beings?

Let me illustrate my point with an obvious example... am I the only human in the galaxy that thinks that mp3 sounds like shit? Sure compression technology has evolved. Sure you can stick a hundred songs where before you could only carry ten. But hey,  isn't that concept a little like swapping a night with Megan Fox for a night with Amy Winehouse and her three clone sisters? (wow, hell of a scary thought there.)

Our children will inevitably grow thinking that mp3 is "the standard of sound" most probably changing some patterns of thought and conduct. What's happening right now is quite overwhelming. (and scary) Don't you kind readers feel sometimes that humanity is going down the drain a bit faster that it usually has.?

Fire provides humans the possibility to eat a meal each day, and it can be used also to power an F-22 to blow an entire block to oblivion. Certainly the wheel can be used to move a truck full of "puppy chow" to feed all the homeless dogs of the world, or it can move a Panzer tank to squash your ass. It is dumb and pointless to discuss about whether technological improvements are good or bad.  The point I'm getting at is that we, as both content producers and consumers, have the responsibility to act as rational, conscious humans with will and power to change our world. DEBUG YOUR LIFE!
I believe we have to think carefully our decisions and act independent to the trends corporations  oblige us only for their convenience. We have to act by OUR convenience and not THEIRS! WE are not garbage cans with mouths wide open to receive all the trash the market has to offer! Spread the word!
What I'm talk'n about my brooothers and sissster's is a reevoolution!

Ok. Guess I got a little carried away. Blame my ipod. (get the contradiction?)
Replacing "The disposable heroes of hypocrisy" with some mellow and artsy tunes courtesy of Bjork.

Cut to the chase: The twitter conundrum

I'm a digital artist. Or try to be one. At least that is what's written on my social security card. Before my job as blogger here at Iconshock, I worked 10-12 hours a day post-producing my short film. I had one PC for Internet and "Office" duties, and another for editing and compositing video, Photoshop and 3D work.

And my life was relatively easy.

Had only two gmail accounts (one personal, one corporate) and a few bookmarks for my favorite news and design related sites. I read the paper daily, thought of myself as an informed human being and talked frequently with my friends on my mobile or by traditional phone. No feeds. No readers.

I met with my small, but beloved social group once or twice a week at my place or at gigs, and always used E-mail to arrange our gatherings or update and gossip. I download content with Azureus or via Rapidshare (always copyright free of course:) ) and never, ever use any instant messaging client other than google's built in chat.  I need to be focused on my creative work, and being pendent to Messenger, Yahoo, Myspace, Facebook, delicious and so on just ruins my concentration redirecting my energy from where it should be.

Now days everything is different. My new self, the "wired" version, is hooked with Twitter, Digg, Blog and forum accounts. Plus a dozen RSS feeds. Oh, I forgot, I'm trying Yoono too.

I spend from thirty minutes to an hour daily! just checking superficially all my "virtual" ID's. I can double or triple that time if I reply and organize everything. The impact Twitter has brought to my life comprises basically in turning my 8 work hour day into a 5 work hour day. I do know what my friends are doing at an hourly basis, but haven't seen them or even heard their voice in two weeks. And to add up, now I don't have two user names and passwords to remember, but 12! There are sites like http://chi.mp/, http://cliqset.com/and www.Gizapage.com that try to manage and unify all your social identities, but paradoxically you have to create yet another account for it. You can't help finding the humor in all this to avoid insanity.

I know interaction and immediacy are key concepts in Web 2.0 applications and lifestyle, but I just feel uncomfortable embracing something "just because". It could be a personal issue with authority, but I have a problem finding out how can Twitter really become indispensable. Or really useful for that matter. I find it tremendously overwhelming and intrusive to be sharing and to be reading all the time to what the heck other people are doing. I really don't care if some guy from Arkansas is taking a dump. Its definitively a new and creepy kind of voyeurism. Loading my brain with the daily happenings of the world and worrying for my family and friends is enough info to accompany my day. I do not want my brain to carry a heavier burden. I just couldn't even if I forced myself to do it.

Bottom line... is Twitter a good or a bad thing.? I think both. You can either think of it as the ultimate stream of consciousness of the world, or as the best way to drain your life away, one "tweet" at the time.

By the way. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter:)