
Why Twitter catches on: No guilt  - peter123
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2009/05/why_twitter_cat.html
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axod
Its one of its big downsides as well IMHO. There's no real incentive to reply
to tweets. It's not about discussion, it's about "Here I am! Here's what I
think is important! Listen to me."

I don't think that model is sustainable for most people. Which may go some of
the way to explaining the high churn rate.

~~~
tierack
"It's not about discussion" is accurate, but not because Twitter is a
narcissist platform. I think it's more akin to sending UDP packets (with no
guarantee of delivery to the recipients) than email (with its excessive
guarantees). It's even less like mass emails when it's being used like a low-
priority broadcast (like when I use Twitter to say I'm headed to a particular
bar, my friends are implicitly invited, but with the need to arrange times or
RSVP, etc.).

In another sense, Twitter is about delayed discussion. It can set up future
conversations that bypass some of the introduction. A friend tweets that he
bought a house, he closes on this date, and moves in on that date; the next
time I see him we have the chance to jump into an interesting conversation
about the house and the process instead of him having to repeat that
information for the millionth time.

And there's something else Twitter's done that I'm not sure could have
happened before. I wrote a tweet about being in the Salt Lake City airport,
and a friend of mine calls me to say "Hey, me too. Let's grab a drink." We
hadn't seen each other in a while and neither of us knew the other was
traveling or where. That wouldn't have happened a year ago. We would have
missed that chance.

(I went a little further than I expected here. But Twitter has some real use
cases people are still figuring out, and they're different than email or text
or IM or phone calls. People using Twitter for "Here I am! Here's what I think
is important! Listen to me." are doing it wrong.)

~~~
axod
Good points.

For me though, the chance meetup at an airport is much more likely to happen
on facebook, where I think more 'real life' friends live. Since facebook
changed to put the emphasis on the 'steam', I think that use case is pretty
much taken care of there.

I definitely see a range of usecases for twitter, but I don't think it works
well for 2 way communication.

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amix
Twitter can be seen as a slot machine.

"It was one of B.F Skinner's most important discoveries that behavior
reinforced intermittently (as opposed to consistently) is the most difficult
to extinguish. In other words, intermittent rewards beat predictable rewards.
It's the basis of most animal training, but applies to humans as well... which
is why slot machines are so appealing, and one needn't be addicted to feel
it."

Read more in Kathy Sierra's post: Is Twitter TOO Good:
[http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/0...](http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/is_twitter_too_.html)

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msluyter
I've sorta wanted an "enterprise twitter" for a while now. A way to broadcast
quick, intra-company messages that don't rise to the level of e-mail on
channels that can be subscribed/unsubscribed to. Sorta like private IRC
channels, I suppose.

~~~
paulgb
This might do what you want: <https://www.yammer.com/>

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bpm140
I think a more accurate analysis is as follows:

The reason more people update statuses (Facebook, Twitter, etc) than maintain
blogs is because there is little guilt in slacking on the former.

If you fail to blog for a week you typically hate yourself. If you fail to
tweet for a week you think nothing of it. People prefer things that don't make
them hate themselves.

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SamAtt
I don't see how updating your status on Facebook presents any more obligation
than putting out a tweet on Twitter. There's certainly not so much of a
difference that it would make me use one over the other.

Funny Story, every follower I have on Twitter is someone I know from the net.
I tried getting some folks from my actual life on but they thought it was "a
poor man's facebook"

(in fairness, I'm a lousy salesman in general so it might be my fault)

~~~
axod
I think in general facebook_friends > twitter_friends in terms of more likely
to be close real life friends etc. Which means there's more of an incentive to
reply, comment, etc (Also obviously the fact facebook has comments inline, no
char limit etc helps)

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BenS
I think it's popular because people love to promote themselves. Low level of
required engagement feels secondary to me.

