Twitter is an Asynchronous Mobile Roundtable

I haven’t been using Twitter for very long, but one thing’s clear: it isn’t microblogging. I started using Twitter because I felt that maintaining a traditional blog wasn’t well aligned with my ADHD or whatever it is that makes me think that something else is always worth paying more attention to until I pay attention to it and, well, I digress. To me, Twitter, with its glorious 140-character limit, was the ticket. Even with my attention span taken into account, I could do this. No problem.

Now I’ve got a few followers on Twitter, and a few more that I follow, and it occurred to me that Twitter isn’t microblogging, and it’s not a simple tool to let others know “what you’re doing.” It’s more like a group of people sitting around a table chatting, referring content, exchanging ideas, meeting up offline, etc. But you don’t miss anything if you get up from the table to grab a beer. And there’s not just one table, but lots of tables. Everyone has their own table, with their group sitting at the table, but each of those people have their own table. You’re sitting at their table, but you only see your table.

Explaining Twitter to the uninitiated is good times.

Maybe a more accurate term would be that Twitter is an Asynchronous Mobile Multiverse of Interwoven Roundtables. Weird.

UPDATE: Kids don’t seem to use twitter..they don’t need to. They’re already very social. Twitter helps undo the social fracturing of adulthood.

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