Colin's Blog My thoughts on everything.

What is Twitter?

Micro-blogging service Twitter seems to be enjoying a surge of interest lately. Much of the conversation seems to be a renewed effort to define (or at least describe) just what this Twitter thing is.

The roundup (in no particular order):

• Maggie posted Lee LeFever's recent CommonCraft video on Twitter. Note: I usually gush about Lee's videos, but I just didn't think Lee captured the essence of Twitter the way he has with RSS, social networking, etc. It feels like an out-dated description of Twitter's original intent rather than the reality of what it has become.
• Josh Catone at Read/WriteWeb wrote that Twitter Is The Tech Water Cooler. My SMG colleague Rob has made a similar analogy in the past.
• Chris Garrett at BlogHerald wrote that Twitter is like a coffee break.
• Nathania Johnson at Search Engine Watch thinks that Twitter might be the new Google alternative.
• Jeremy at ShoeMoney.com thinks that Twitter is somewhere between IM and a blog.

My $0.02.

The water cooler and coffee break analogies are pretty close and certainly capture a lot of what we see in the Twitter-verse. My preferred analogy, however, comes from the few months that I spent working online from a local coffee shop and the may hours I've spent in little pubs. Twitter is either a pub or a cafe - depending on your preference and/or the time of day.

Twitter is much like these places for a number of reasons:
First, every conversation is somewhere between public and private. You might be sitting in a booth having a conversation that may be private - but since you're in a public place, it is certainly not secure.
Second, you can talk to one person at a time or many.  A Twitter conversation can be a quiet chat in the corner, or you standing up on your chair to make an announcement to the room.
Third, you get interrupted a lot. Sometimes it's someone barging in halfway through an ongoing conversation that they only half-heard. Other times someone just walks in, heads straight for you, sits down and stars chatting.

The pub/cafe analogy isn't perfect, but I think it comes closer to capturing the full breadth and depth of the Twitter experience.  What do you think?  How do you explain Twitter?

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2. Debating the Benefits of Twitter
3. Twitter is down – and I’m OK
4. Twitterbowl Analysis
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