What It's Become...

I have been thinking about Twitter a lot lately (have you noticed?), and realized that I'm so enamored with it because of what it's become for me.

Let me explain. When I first started using Twitter, I would write these random and completely unimportant Tweets: "I think I might go grab a cup of coffee," or "Just heard club remix of O Fortuna. Don't know whether to hate it or dance to it". I dipped my toe in the water with these fairly inocuous posts because I was curious more than anything.

But then I started to follow people and a strange thing happened: they started to follow me too. Now I don't have 20,000 followers like @scobleizer (nor would I want to, I think) but now that people read what I have to say...and I read what they have to say...we can have conversations (as long as they we use fewer than 140 words per message).

The point is, Twitter is not the speed dating version of the blog. It's so much more. Blogging is a uni-directional medium, for the most part. Twitter actually allows and encourages dialogues between people and is witness to conversations involving hundreds perhaps even thousands.

Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit and perhaps I'll be sick of Twitter in another six months. But what really stands out for me right now is that through Twitter I am exposed to so many different and interesting people (@newmediajim, for one) who are doing and saying tremendous things. If I weren't on Twitter, watching...listening, I wouldn't be nearly as caught up on social media trends, new tools and interesting (and real-time) stories.