

Ask YC: Do you believe in Twitter philosophy?  - adityakothadiya

Recently it's been questioned on RWW that Twitter is still for Geeky people and not for rest of the world. It's hard for someone new to convince why he would share what he is doing with the rest of the world.<p>What about you? Do you believe in Twitter philosophy? Is it only for geeks? Or can it be taken to mainstream people?<p>If yes, what ideas do you think that can be build around that philosophy to provide value proposition rather than just "status updating"?<p>Do you think we need to derive signal from Twitter?
======
brk
New technologies and ideas like Twitter have a habit of appearing completely
useless at first, and then suddenly catching on. I remember the first time I
saw the ICQ "pager" on the internet in the mid 90's. My thought was "WTF is
this stupid thing good for?", now (like most people) I have multiple IM
accounts and do a good bit of my daily communications via IM.

I was having a conversation this weekend with my wife about Twitter. She is
way more technical than the "average" wife, but doesn't really "socialize"
online much (her IM client has only me as a contact). Anyway, I was trying to
explain Twitter to her, and some of my summary points were:

1) Twitter is the evolution beyond IM, which was the evolution beyond email.
2) Twitter is (likely) best suited for 1-way status updates (I'm at X, doing
Y) to close groups of friends vs. "micro-blogging" which seems (to me) like
"micro-attention-whoring" most of the time. 3) Twitter is useful when you
don't need or want a response, just a way to keep friends/family in the loop
about things where the value decays over time (ie: you wouldn't post your
vacation summary via Twitter, but you might mention that you landed safely at
the airport) 4) Twitter took a new approach, trying to embrace some of the
Web2.0 methods, where it's NOT a closed client-server system as IM is. Instead
it seems more like a framework that is waiting for the true killer app to be
built around it (or, some might say a solution looking for a problem).

~~~
iamdave
I think this is the best explanation of the value of Twitter I've ever seen.

------
dood
Twitter has an interesting problem: they sell it as service to tell people
"what are you doing", explicitly pushing the "hyper-connected" angle. This was
great for early adopters, but normal people don't care about _the idea_ of
being "hyper-connected" and being informed every time their friends fart.

Funnily enough though, normal people will care about what Twitter really is: a
general-purpose platform-agnostic publish-and-subscribe messaging system. Or
as mainstream users will initially see it: a simple way to text & IM all your
friends in one go.

If Twitter wants to grow big in the mainstream, I think they would do well to
completely change their public sales pitch to focus on this. Once this is
sucessfully communicated to the average user it will become huge, and people
will quickly and instinctively grasp the usefulness of platform agnostic
pub/sub.

------
axod
I have no idea who it is for. I'd rather be doing stuff than telling everyone
about what I'm doing.

~~~
greendestiny
It's for communication. Pretty much a fundamental need for the human animal.

~~~
axod
Email, IM, IRC are for communication.

Twitter seems to be more for "Announcing" rather than communicating.

Maybe I'm just not well connected enough, but I really doubt anyone in the
world cares what I'm currently doing day to day. The people that do care, I
communicate with via more appropriate methods.

~~~
greendestiny
It's still communicating, and that's what it's for. I mean I get what you're
saying, you don't want to communicate anything that's particularly suited to a
twitter sort of form, and that that form of communication therefore seems
trivial. I'm just saying communication forms a fundamental need, and if
something facilitates that then thats what its for.

------
iamdave
I'm part of the crowd that still doesn't understand the efficiency of twitter
in any environment other than average use. If you want to equate twitter's
parallel with geek society because it's hard for geeks to get their non geek
friends to use it, by all means make that the bottom line of your argument.

For me, I don't think it's an issue of who's a geek and who's not, it's more
"who's going to leave their AIM or ICQ protocols to use something on the web
that does the exact same thing?".

~~~
mdemare
But Twitter is _public_. Isn't that the main difference with IM?

~~~
turker
I think the main difference with IM is that Twitter does not necessarily
require a reply.

------
Husafan
If my mother wants to know what I am doing, she will call me.

People who do not spend most of their time in front of a computer will call
their friends directly, rather than checking Twitter.

Only the stereotypical geek sees an advantage in non-personal communication
about personal matters.

~~~
akkartik
I watched Noah Glass respond to this at a panel with, "I want to know what my
mother is up to. But that doesn't mean I want to _talk_ to her right now."

That sentence is phrased for maximum humour, but with a kernel of deep
insight:

a) If your mom was in the same room as you you would talk far more often with
her than you do now. The easier you make something the more frequently it will
happen. The more context y'all share about each other the more often y'all
will talk to each other. And it's super hard to share context when you're far
away from -- and out of sync with -- each other.

b) When you're face to face a lot of time you say things to each other where
the only response is a grunt. That doesn't seem to be appropriate in IM or
over the phone. The result: we're more careful what we say over the phone or
IM. But if you can stop self-selecting what seems worth talking about you can
find far more interesting conversation.

c) Just like not everything deserves a response, not everything deserves a
response _right now_. If I know what is going on with my mother I'll have
better conversation when I do talk to her. And it's better to lay the
groundwork for it now, before we start talking.

d) We've had online communication for 10 years now, and it hasn't really
cannibalized real-world interactions for the vast majority of us. What it has
done is enriched and complemented them. In this case, twitter doesn't replace
conversation, but it allows me to sidestep the tedious initial "how was your
day, dear?" segways and head straight for the most juicy objects of
conversation from somebody's timeline.

Conversation happens off twitter, but benefits from being rooted in it. This
isn't purely synchronous IM or phone, nor is it purely asynchronous email.
It's just a more organic way to manage conversation.

~~~
adityakothadiya
all are great points. this definitely defends the twitter philosophy in more
convincing way.

------
paul
I remember thinking that SMS seemed kind of dumb. If I have a cell phone, and
the person I'm messaging has a cell phone, why wouldn't I just make a phone
call? Now I probably SMS more than I call...

------
TrevorJ
I think microblogging as a concept has some merit. Everyone forms thoughts
differently and for some, Twitter just works.

I think when social aggregations catch on more people will be more free to
choose whatever medium of expression they choose and be assured that they are
communicating with the people they want to communicate with.In fact, I really
see a need for the "Sharers" if you will to be able to create their own
_outbound_ social feeds that aggregate the many forms of self-expression a
single person may want to partake in.

------
mattmaroon
I enjoy twitter, but don't see the mainstream bothering with it.

~~~
tonyvt2005
I wonder if it is catching on better outside the US? I know text-messaging
took a little longer to go mainstream here versus internationally.

------
optimal
Really? I think it's more like a mini-MySpace: tell the world what you're up
to (in excruciating detail). If so I'd expect it to catch on with the same
demographic.

------
rokhayakebe
Twitter alone won't have much value today or tomorrow. but pair it with
fireeagle and you can build a nice location enabled digital timeline.

~~~
_albert_
Or pair it with twitxr.com and you can build a nice location enabled photo
moblog that broadcast it all together to all other social networks you may use

