I’ve been using Twitter for a couple years now and I’ve gradually gotten the hang of it. A lot of people have trouble seeing what the appeal of Twitter is, though, and it can be puzzlingly difficult to explain for some reason. Someone I know asked me to explain what the appeal is, and after a bit of work, I came up with an explanation of Twitter that people seem to really respond to and understand. I thought I’d repost it here for those interested.

I use Twitter because I like to follow people I find interesting to keep up with. I see Twitter as being a single open IM session with all of my friends at once, without the pressure to respond, but with the freedom to pop in and comment, join an interesting ongoing conversation, or to just lurk quietly and enjoy other people. For me it’s not really a way for people to just yak about what they’re eating. It’s a public conversation… a way to have a massive, distributed conversation that’s only as synchronous as you feel like letting it be. Almost like having a conversation in a bar. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but overhear — you said you’re playing Modern Warfare 2 as well?”

Once you get a decent-sized network, you have an awesome instant support structure to bounce ideas off of and ask questions. I ask technical art questions, information about games or companies, get new music and movie recommendations, and I even had people offering me a place to sleep when I was nearly stranded in Chicago overnight just last night and asked for help.

And the fact that there are so many ways to access it makes it a lot easier to get closer to people, in a way. The quality of your Twitter experience is in some small part a combination of how social you are, how much you ‘get’ the concept of it, and whether or not the people you follow ‘get’ it as well. Honestly, Twitter’s probably useless for 90% of people, but the 10% that use it have a *blast*. It’s tremendously exciting seeing the evolution of personal communication and how small the world is becoming.