Don’t get Twitter? It’s a chat room

Categories: MicroMediaPosted on September 20th, 2007

Many folks don’t understand Twitter, it makes them nauseous. For me, it’s very simple, Twitter is simply a chat room. I ask questions, or tell people information about what I’m looking at (similar to Delicious or my shared feed) and it feels more manageable than instant messaging (which I cut out over a year ago).

I think there’s some beauty with the 140 characters, just like a real conversation between two people, there’s small exchanges of ideas and knowledge, by forcing the content into a small package, you’re forced to tighten up what you want to see, encouraging more exchanges.

Lately, I’ve been “mini-lifehacks”, I’m sharing how I make my life easier, sometimes just the small things.

Yesterday, I shared some tips on getting an audience engaged, espcially if their a shy culture (I spoke to investors in Hong Kong yesterday, and applied it). Just like a conversation, there were responses from Daniel, Michael, Victoria, and Pistachio, each added value.

Today, I gave some speaker tips on how to be better at listening before presenting to an audience.

What else is great about Twitter? You can ask questions to your community and quickly get a response back. I’ve done this several times.

I’m going to continue this trend, and will be releasing little nuggets, and will listen when people respond back to me (by typing @jowyang). You won’t get updates of me “washing the cat” or “eating a BLT”, but be warned, I update frequently, in a conversational manner, just like a chat room.

Lastly, if you’re a Web Strategist (you make decisions for websites) then you may want to check out this post I wrote on using Twitter for your organization.

I hope you join me, if you’re on Twitter please add me (jowyang), and I’ll reciprocate and add you too.

Update: Ann at Marketing Profs wrote a really great article on use cases of Twitter, she’s very influential and impacts many marketers.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 11:37 am and is filed under MicroMedia. 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.

You’ve persuaded me to sign-up. I have some Pownce Beta-invites if you want any.

Posted by Glen Allsopp on September 20th, 2007 at 12:28 pm

You are right, it’s an easy way of passing notes to friends/family…

Sometimes I want to share a link, article, picture,etc.. with my father - so I send him an email (that’s how all of us ended up with email overload..). Things like this are meant to be future replacements for that - unfortunatelly I will still continue to send emails to my father (not all of us are “up-to-speed”)

Posted by China Internet Marketing on September 20th, 2007 at 12:44 pm

To me I found Twitter is like the “Radio System” in the Taxi (in Hong Kong, at least). People just speak out whatever they wanna say, to the air, and then if someone would like to start the conversation based on that, then that someone would join in, and the whole gang would be able to listen to it… …

Posted by Leonard Ng Szehin on September 20th, 2007 at 9:13 pm

I would like to agree with Leanard some way at least. for me it is background noise, like a radio in a car, or at work.

Posted by nimble_monkey on September 21st, 2007 at 1:02 am

[...] Jeremiah Owyang: Don’t get Twitter? It’s a chat room [...]

Posted by Twittering | Beyond Noise on September 21st, 2007 at 1:10 am

Hello Jeremy, I’ve just discovered your blog and I’m reading a lot of posts with interest (especially the one talking about how irrelevant a corporate web site is (becoming).
Talking about Twitter, I’d like to know your view on Hictu (www.hictu.com), which is essentially Twitter+Video… but something more. I look forward for your view!
Best Regards,
Giacomo Vacca

Posted by Giacomo Vacca on September 21st, 2007 at 7:19 am

Twitter is like a chat room exactly the same way a blog is a distributed forum.

Twitter is unlike a chat room in one significant respect. A chat “room” supports the notion of people being in the same room - thus anyone who speaks in a room can be heard by anyone else in the room.

Twitter allows you to follow anyone and for anyone to follow you - but you don’t have to do both.

In a way, it’s like a single, very large, filtered chat room.

Posted by Zaskoda on September 23rd, 2007 at 10:44 am

Great points Zaskoda

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on September 23rd, 2007 at 2:54 pm

[...] Some have drawn parallels between Twitter and chat rooms, and I think that’s a relatively good comparison, but there are problems with it. First, a chat room is a silo of its own. While anyone is free to join a chat room and see what everyone is saying, the communication within a chat room rarely gets published. Twitter keeps a record, making Twitter a publishing platform as much as it is a messaging platform. Secondly, it’s difficult to establish enduring identity in a chat room. You give yourself a name when you log in, but there’s no verifiable connection between that name and you. Twitter gives you a simple profile page that also affords a short bio and a link to your website, effectively solving this problem. [...]

Posted by The Twitter Revolution « A Couple Bits on January 20th, 2008 at 2:35 pm

I am 56 years old retired and need help reinventing myself. Both my husband and I have debt isses and we are trying to keep our heads a float. Credit Couselors are not very helpful. Can your think tank contribute to suggestions on matters like this

Posted by connie miller on April 26th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

I need a chat room to talk about a hard subject to talk about. Can you help????

Posted by tracy on June 2nd, 2008 at 8:22 pm

Twitter is very nifty. But for me, it’s more like a mini-blog rather than a chat room. Although it has some semblance with a chat room because of the reply function and how your updates are displayed in your follower’s page.

That’s just what I think.