Boom!

My Take On Twitter

Twitter = Talking

Almost every week I encounter a person in my life who feels he doesn’t understand Twitter—not that there’s anything wrong with that.  “I don’t get it”, she huffs.  Or “What’s the point?” or “I don’t want to tell the world what I’m doing at all times.”  Inevitably, I feel a strange compulsion to explain the service, hastily rattling off how it works and how I use it and how I’ve benefitted from plugging in.

The best entry-level analogy I can make to Twitter is office chatter—the overheard office banter, the 2-minute cubicle doorway interactions, the let’s-stand-in-the-hallway-with-coffee weekend recaps. Some companies are full of it, with open offices, ping-pong tables, gchat, happy hour, you name it. Others have a more, shall we say, “subdued” culture, which was the case when I worked at the Harvard Kennedy School. A few professors spoke casually, but it was the exception; most kept their heads down in the hallway and restricted interaction to within formal structures:  workshops, e-mail, manuscripts, teaching, and presentations.

Talking Is Important

Theoretically we can all work from home and run a company together, maybe even have daily videoconferences, but it comes with a cost.  Ricardo Hausmann, a charismatic economics professor I worked with, once referred to “office spillover” as a critical, intangible reason for why collocation works so well.

Similarly, in “The Tricke List”, Rands explained one of his five standing items: the random hallway chat.

Having a random hallway chat usually isn’t going to be a career changer. 9 out of 10 of those conversations are lightweight, but those are 9 conversations I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Plus, it’s hallway visibility, and in a gig where 90% of the days are spent holed up in meetings, that’s time well spent. And there’s the 10th conversation where I learn something huge:

Wait, the project is HOW FAR behind?

Hold it, you’re thinking about QUITTING?

By choosing to create a moment where I leave my structured day to have a random conversation, I’m creating informational opportunity, and while these moments may appear to have low initial return on time investment, you’re playing a numbers game. You’re counting on the fact that, over time, over many moments, you’re creating unexpected potential.

Twitter re-creates office spillover among endless groups of disconnected people by enabling and encouraging conversations with a higher tolerance for fluff.  At first glance that looks useless; then again, I know 10 professors who think your mid-day hallway chatter is a waste of time.  Who’s right?

Kickin’ It With The World

How many of your truly good friends do you work with?  Probably not many. Chat and e-mail keep us connected; Twitter takes this a step further by allowing you to listen to (and if you’re lucky, interact with) people you would never dream of knowing, let alone work with.  Shaq, John Mayer, John Gruber, Merlin Mann, the CEO of Zappos, JetBlue… on and on. You get to kick it with all these people you admire or just think are hilarious, and best of all, it’s free, and it’s mobile.

Twitter doesn’t just bridge the gap, it adds a new dimension to the conversation.  Take e-mail.  This post I’m writing right now—to whom should I send it?  Which of my friends will care?  Blogging bypasses that burden of choice and publishes my thoughts beyond my existing network, to whomever is listening asynchronously via Google and social media.  It turns me into a publisher with instant, global reach.  In one sense, Twitter does the same thing to chat, but on a smaller level—hence the term micro-blogging.  The benefit is not that I’m writing, but that others are writing, too, and I get to listen to them.

It’s What You Make It

I’ll end with three things I tell people first:  one, you can do whatever you want with it.  No one said you have to describe what you’re watching on TV.  Two, the more you use it, the more its value (and alternate real-world analogies) will reveal itself.  Three, having your actual friends on it is an important part of integrating it into your life, and it’s also way more fun that way.

Previously: Robbie 2.0