I finally thought up how  twitter and say facebook or texting are so different.  Twitter is about finding people based on shared interests or ideas rather than finding existing relationships and discovering their ideas. So if I search twitter for “fly fishing” I’ll find other people who are interested in said topic.  I can then “follow” them and see what else they have to say about that and other topics. I may not know them (and they may not know me) but I may learn a lot about fly fishing and scratch my “i wish it was spring” itch all at the same time.

Likewise other people may query a word that I have “tweeted” about and then decide to follow me.

Facebook approaches the scenario from a different angle.  Facebook is based on pre-existing relationships.  I know john so I become his “friend” and then whatever he writes about comes up in my news feed.  Likewise whatever I write about comes up in his.  The downside here is that John (or the rest of my friends) may not be interested in fly fishing.

To me it would seem odd to search facebook for people interested in fly fishing and then ask them to add me as a friend.  I mean, we don’t know each other.  Twitter on the other hand doesn’t have the presumption of relationship. I can follow people and they can follow me whether we know each other  or not.  No pressure.  And if you don’t like what someone’s tweeting, no problem.  Just stop following them.

Twitter also has some unique features that I find really interesting:

1.  Functionally you can set up your blog, FB, and twitter to interact via twitter.  That is to say, update one and update them all.  This can be a serious time saver for the hard core social media type.

2. Because my audience is no longer limited to just people I know, my potential audience base grows.  In my case, not much – as I know most of the people who follow my tweets, but still it’s, at least theoretically, a bigger audience.

3. I can get to “know” people who aren’t my friends: celebrities for example.  There are many people I follow who I think are really cool, but that I may never meet.  By reading their twitter I get a better idea for who they are.  (I’m assuming their publicists don’t write their twitters.)  Sometimes you discover they’re nerdier than you might have thought or, of course, they may turn out to be pretty neat.

4. This a point from erick (@ecardoza) He says twitter levels the playing field.  You only get 140 words to say something so there’s no room for anyone to really shine with elaborate illustrations.  They have to say what they’re saying in a nice concise way.  This can make it a shallow relationship tool, but as I have already said.  Twitter is more about content than relationship so it works.

So there you have it.

Twitter is pretty cool.  You may want to get an account and see what it’s all about.  www.twitter.com

If you want to follow my “tweets” search twitter for “stevebleile” and you’ll find me.

Cheerio

sb