Where Twitter Fits
By Daniel Miessler on January 2nd, 2009: Tagged as Blogging | Twitter
Like many others, I’m trying to figure out where Twitter fits. Not just in my life online, but in general.
I recently tweeted a question:
Should non-DM tweets include context? In other words, should Twitter remain a micro-blogging platform vs. chat, or is it too late?
This captures part of the problem. It’s not a micro-blogging platform if half of your posts are, “It depends on the flavor.” That is a chat fragment, and it alienates followers rather than attracts them.
So if Twitter is for micro-blogging, then what’s “micro”? Obviously the 140 character limit is meant to help us with this question.
My original understanding of Twitter was along the lines of “personal status updates”, with some “personal musings” thrown in, e.g. “I wonder why chipmunks always look so happy. I must investigate”. But in both cases the tweets are still complete ideas–even if they’re short ones or mostly meaningless.
Basically, I saw Twitter as a means of not losing touch with the personal influence of those you care about. So perhaps you have a friend who’s always complaining about rude drivers, but he moved away. Well, it brings a smile to your face when you see him tweet, “They should require people to get a license before they can drive. Oh, wait…” Not because what he said was that funny, but because it’s your friend complaining about bad drivers like he always does.
But now Twitter’s becoming something else: Chat, current events search, etc. I suppose this isn’t a problem since you don’t need to follow those who “misuse” Twitter (whatever that means), but it’d be nice to have something to tell a newbie when they ask what you do with Twitter.
Right now I’m not sure most users could give a tight answer. ::