"In Defense and Explanation of Twitter"

I wrote the following for a new-grad program application, and thought I would post these thoughts...


Oh, Twitter. It is definitely one of the tech buzzwords of today. Visit a few blogs and company sites and you are bound to run across various designs of “follow me on Twitter!” buttons. Though I have zero formal training in marketing, it would make sense that many view Twitter as one of the latest-and-greatest web application bandwagons through which to expand one's audience. On the other hand, well-known personalities, especially celebrities, are likely to collect thousands upon thousands of followers—and could easily utilize the service to communicate with them directly and personally. (Such, I might add, is very exciting from the fan's end. I know this from personal experience!) Many also tout Twitter as a source for disseminating and reading breaking news before it can be posted or shared via other avenues.

To me, the experience of Twitter is a bit different. I began with what I would suppose is a typical non-Twitter-user's view: the question, “what is the point of it?”, followed by dismissively waving it off. I specifically remember once observing on a friend's laptop screen that he and several others were writing messages on Twitter back and forth to each other. My thought at the time was that I could not believe they were involved in such a silly waste of time. Somehow, though, my Digital-Media-Design-major's curiosity got the best of me. I found myself walking around with thoughts of approximately one hundred forty characters in length popping into my mind. After a couple of days this started driving me a little crazy, so I logged on and (with some disappointment) settled on the username I really wanted but preceded by an underscore. Oh well.

In the beginning of my Twitter days, of course, I did not really know what I was doing. I eagerly searched for and followed people I knew in “real life” and hoped that they followed me back. I fell prey to tweeting (with some repetitiveness) about what I was doing at the moment, if I was particularly loving it. As I think we tend to do—particularly these days via social networking applications—I put my thoughts out there in the hopes that others would find my online persona of at least mild interest or amusement and be thus inspired to follow me.

Along the timeline of my first few months getting really into Twitter, I began to change my approach. I sought out users who posted links to content I found relevant to my potential career path. I began to actually take up others on their Follow Friday recommendations instead of skipping over tweets filled with usernames. I followed people who were just plain fun, quirky, or made me smile. Perhaps most importantly, though, I realized that Twitter is most enjoyable after you transition from passively taking in others' information and thoughts as they stream in front of your eyes (and occasionally outputting your own) to interacting with others. It is probably easy to forget that behind the tweets is a real person typing them from their laptop or mobile phone. I discovered that if I started replying to what others were saying, many were often inclined to reply back and converse. For a long time I had been skeptical about talking with strangers in an online venue, but at least in the context of Twitter, my opinion has changed. Thanks to Twitter, I am able to connect with friendly people from anywhere in the world whom I doubt I would ever meet otherwise.

Let me end with probably my most personally exciting Twitter story. Thanks to a particular Twitter user whose posts and conversation I greatly enjoy, I connected with another Twitter user. She and I exchanged several messages and discovered common interests. I learned that she helps teach a course at Penn, occasionally flying to Philadelphia to be on campus. One of the times she was here, we happened to have a mutual free moment and met up. I found her thoroughly enjoyable and positive. If not for Twitter, we most likely would never have met. In the future, hopefully, we will be able to go rock climbing together!

A final note: yes, I agree, there is a lot of noise on Twitter. I see this whenever I search the trending topics. Therefore, the key is to find and follow the people who post valuable content, who are friendly and interesting and willing to interact. Is this not what we wish to do in “real life”, as well?