twitter explained

i felt like it was the end of my ability to grasp technology as i've watched dumbfounded by twitter's staggering growth. but after talking to a number of people about twitter, i think i at least have a clue. so for those that already know and love twitter, move on. for those that can't explain why tweets are taking over the world, read on.

Twitter, quite simply, is a real time set of information for anything. want to know why caesar crossed the rubicon, check out wikipedia. but if you want to know whether 1oak is having a good night, go to search.twitter.com and search for 1oak.

current events like swine flu for example can be scooped by searching twitter. latest restaurant reviews are best viewed by searching twitter.

facebook has really blown their status updates by not making it searchable. presumably because of privacy controls, fb has not made status updates searchable, but it's kind of pathetic that you can't search among your friends for updates which include specific words.

i have often asked the question, why would anyone twitter at all. the best answer i can come up with is because you can. all of a sudden with a few seconds of your time, you can reach out to all your followers and get a point across. further, with their ability to re-tweet what you've written, your idea can reach thousands or even millions of people within a few minutes. that's very powerful! nothing else available today can facilitate that.

if facebook doesn't get their act together, twitter could end of being the social network of choice for the world. when you're up over 500 friends on facebook, what does it matter if your comments are open for the whole world (i don't consider myself to be particularly friendly and i have over 400 friends on FB)?