Text — Twitter: a conversation about real life
If twitter (and jaiku and pownce) is about conversations — and, at its best, it is — it can be tempting to think of it like some other internet conversations, like IRC or MSN chat.
But thinking back to old IRC days, or watching my kids use MSN today, I see the difference. On twitter, there’s not a lot of the “afk”, “brb”, “sorry, was busy IRL”, “g2g” you see in chat networks. Of course, there are still lots of acronyms and abbreviations, and they come from the same camp (OMG, IMHO, lulz, etc). But they are usually used for brevity, humour or to remind us that we are using teh internets.
The big difference is that when we go away from twitter, we don’t have to announce it or apologise for it. It’s not about real-life interrupting our online world. We remain engaged with our real lives while reporting on our real lives and real selves on twitter/jaiku/pownce. If we go away for a few hours, we can still reply and be “heard”. Simple conversations sometimes last for hours. But life goes on and we talk about it online.
To me, this is crucial. Not just because I like this aspect of it, but because it means we, all of us, are not letting go of reality. Whether you think of or use these social networks for lifestreaming, microblogging or taking part in a global conversation doesn’t really matter too much. It’s social and it works because it is connected to our life.
