Why Do You Think People Like Twitter?

Prior to an inter­view on Fri­day about Twitter’s “sta­ying power,” Cait­lin Murphy (KIRO intern, UW grad) asked me that ques­tion. In pre­pa­ra­tion for our mee­ting, I twee­ted: “Why do you like Twit­ter? Which is your favo­rite, Twit­ter or Face­book?” I also looked at some of the ans­wers to the ques­tion “What would you say to a friend who asked you about Twit­ter?” from our spring survey.

Your Take-Aways

Here’s what some of y’all said on Twitter:

From Paolo Mot­tola (@paolojr):
Twit­ter is my social RSS feed, but Face­book is where I socia­lize. Facebook>Twitter IMO

From Tarja Kalli­nen (@tkallinen):
I like twit­ter because it’s easy (with iPhone), ins­tant, brief, just main points. I like Face­book too but it’s more labor-intensive
and
One more thing about FB vs Twit­ter: on FB you’re com­mu­ni­ca­ting w/ friends-feels inap­pro­priate to be too opi­nio­na­ted or political.

From James Roberts (@jrnoded):
twit­ter by a long [shot] — no hid­den agen­das (well maybe) but just con­ver­sa­tion no fluff.

From Shan­non Hug­gins (@shuggins_6):
Depends on what I want to do.

From Walt Boyes (@waltboyes)
twit­ter for fast brea­king stuff, face­book for most everything else.

From Elaine Nel­son (@epersonae)
re twit­ter vs face­book: twit­ter, defi­ni­tely. it doesn’t try to absorb my whole online life.

And some of our anony­mous sur­vey par­ti­ci­pants (data to be relea­sed in 2010 with the Twit­ter book):

• [Twit­ter] con­nects you to your choice of social ner­vous system.
• Ulti­ma­tely the value in Twit­ter is spe­ci­fi­cally due to the length res­tric­tion of messages.
• [Twit­ter is] the main way I keep in touch with friends, meet new peo­ple, get my news, follow what’s going on in Seattle…
• Twit­ter, from the view point of a tele­vi­sion news per­son, offers a chance to com­mu­ni­cate with the com­mu­nity and put a human face onto an industry often malig­ned as a “face­less cor­po­rate monster.”

My Take-Aways

Those com­ments mirror my biases:

• Bre­vity is good. (Count the num­ber of cha­rac­ters in each of the 10 Com­mand­ments in the Old Tes­ta­ment — only two are more than 140 and I can easily edit those two to fewer than 140 cha­rac­ters without affec­ting meaning.)
• Sim­ple is good. (I’m now using Nutshell­Mail so that I don’t have to deal with the Face­book interface.)
• Open­ness is good. (I used to think of tweets as being ephe­me­ral, but now that I’m get­ting Face­book upda­tes via Nutshell­Mail, I rea­lize that it is the Face­book sta­tus that is truly ephe­me­ral, if you have frien­ded more than a few people).
• Single-purpose is good. (Gene­rally spea­king, I pre­fer tools desig­ned for a job than a Swiss-army knife.)

When Cait­lin asked “how do peo­ple use Twit­ter?” I laughed and replied, “how do peo­ple use the phone?”

I was being slightly face­tious, but only slightly. For exam­ple, it wasn’t that long ago that one of my best friends from college kept a cellphone for “emer­gen­cies only” (think flat tire). At the same point in time, my mother was using a cellphone for its “wee­kends free” long dis­tance plan: it was how she kept in touch with her sisters.

Twit­ter is a com­mu­ni­ca­tions tool, a tool that can be used in a myriad of ways, just like the phone. Just like “the mail.” Just like faxes. Just like email. Just like “blogs.” Just like prin­ting presses!

We tal­ked about the dif­fe­ren­ces bet­ween Twit­ter and Face­book (open­ness, reci­pro­city) and the current ten­sion ari­sing from Mark Zuckerman’s efforts to strong-arm mem­bers into being more “public” with their infor­ma­tion (“user-generated content”).

On the “where do you think Twit­ter will be in five years” ques­tion (“sta­ying power”) … I remin­ded her that five years ago we didn’t have You­Tube (foun­ded in February 2005) and yet by May 2006 its vie­wership has pas­sed CNN. Ins­tead, I told her that what we are calling “the real time” (public) web is what is here to stay.

How we are going to be acces­sing the real-time web in five years? That’s where my crys­tal ball gets cloudy. How clear is yours?

Rela­ted: Tim O’Reilly, Why I Love Twitter

This post first appea­red at Wired­Pen