RSSIt has been a while since I last blogged. Instead most of my time has been spent on Twitter interacting with those I follow, or who follow me.
In thinking about why this is the case, I have come up with two reasons, both of which are quite illuminating in perhaps explaining part of Twitter’s success over the last few months.
- Although Twitter can be used in many different ways, what most interests me, and keeps me coming back, is the conversational nature of tweeting. That is, using Twitter you can easily interact almost in real-time with a large group of people, as well as joining conversations others are involved in. This is diametrically opposed to blogging, which by its nature is much less conversational (yes, comments can be used but these are not a conversation to me).
- Tweeting is easy, much easier than writing a blog post. In fact, of all the web 2.0 services, Twitter is probably the easiest to use. All you need to do is put in up to 140 characters of text and submit, and away you go. This is much easier than writing a post for a blog or setting up a Facebook profile, to give two other examples of popular web 2.0 services.
As mentioned above, these two reasons may actually explain part of the astonishing growth of Twitter recently.
The first point illustrates the fact that humans are inherently social creatures who in most cases enjoy and in fact need to interact with other people. Thus, Twitter is fulfilling one of the basic needs of people everywhere.
The second point above shows that the “barriers to entry” to using Twitter for someone new (or relatively new) to social networking are extremely low, and the lowest of probably all web 2.0 services available.
Combining these two observations, it becomes apparent that Twitter is fulfilling a basic human need, and doing it in a way that is extremely easy when first used. Really, the perfect recipe for viral growth.
