Yes, as of recently, I’m on Twitter. I decided to join not out of need or curiosity or the desire to fit in or seem like I know social media or seem like I’m up to speed on technology, but because I decided to open up to the idea that Twitter may actually be useful in allowing me to communicate effectively — let me share my ideas better, let them reach people better.

Twitter (just as any tool, really, and especially just as any platform) is used improperly all the time. By “improperly” I mean used in ways that it wasn’t meant to be used, or in ways that obscure its truly revolutionary, game-changing, unique purpose. I believe that Twitter is unique in that it allows individuals (and groups) to broadcast their thoughts, opinions, reflections (broadly speaking, information) in a lightweight way, and with support for consuming that information.

In other words, As a subscriber, I don’t want articles. I want headlines. And I want them delivered to my doorstep.

The constraint to keep the broadcast lightweight is crucial precisely because we’re letting people broadcast — if the information is too verbose, its sheer volume will make the platform useless. And support for consuming the information lowers the bar for subscriptions. If the information is hard to get, people won’t bother managing their subscriptions.

So yes, I could just have a blog, but by its virtue it will likely contain longer bits of information; and there is no easy way for people to follow my blog unless they subscribe in some way, which will likely be too heavyweight for the number of subscriptions they will likely be maintaining (many of their friends, figures of authority that they trust, companies that they think of, etc.).

Now, a headline might pique your curiosity and then you may want to read more. Twitter supports URLs, which is great. I can have my cake — allow lots of people to go through my content really quickly (so they can go through others’ content too) — and eat it too — still be able to express myself fully.

This blog has a natural connection to Twitter. Many of my posts are snippets of opinion with added context. I should be able to synthesize most of them into something bite-sized. Twitter will create a contract between me and people who may be interested in what I have to say that gives me a scalable forum, and gives them the peace of mind that the content won’t be too time-consuming to get to. I had better be good at synthesizing my content, but it is a great skill to have anyway. In a way, Twitter makes information delivery more democratic.

Of course, that’s not how Twitter is used to a large extent. I think that’s fine — many platforms are abused in some form or another, and different platforms may tolerate different volume of abuse. Since Twitter has such a clear contract, I am okay tolerating abuse because if I do a good job, people who I care about will easily be able to separate me from noise and so I will be able to maximize who I reach out to.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 9th, 2011 at 15:34 and is filed under changes/cyclical, human nature, principles, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.