ΠΩΣ ΠΕΡΙΓΡΑΦΕΙΣ ΤΟ TWITTER ;

Many people have observed the difficulty of explaining what Twitter “is” until the person requesting the explanation tries it out. 

Some “must have” parts to the story:

1. The who what when and why of deciding to join Twitter in May of 2008. (Jeff Jarvis pestered me into it.)

2. My custom-built description of what Twitter “is” and where it came from. Here I note that it’s notoriously difficult to explain to the non-user, but give it a go anyway.

3. Who I follow and why, how I picked them, how I add them now. What it’s like to read the inflow from Twitter.

4. What my Twitter posts consist of, the different types I return to, why I write them that way, and how I go about adding value.

5. The whole 140 characters thing and how that constraint creates the genre.

6. What a Twitter “feed” is, where its value lies, and how it compares to a traditional blog.

7. The connection between micro-blogging and the kind of blogging I’ve been doing at PressThink since 2003, at the Huffington Post since 2005 and IdeaLab since 2007.

8. Some terrible things about Twitter for a writer: can’t edit it, the archiving sucks, can’t keep up with follower growth and “hand add” easily.

9. And then, the thing I need your help with: what do I actually use Twitter for?.

http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2009/01/04/chronicle_hlp.html#comments