Twitter is one of those things that seems just inherently trivial and silly. It’s known as a micro-blogging tool — people write extremely brief ‘updates’ on what’s going on. Updates span a scale from ‘eating Weetbix for breakfast’ to ‘a huge earthquake just took down my house’.

It’s a bit like the early days of the telephone really: people didn’t know yet what it would be able to do, and were concerned about how it might be used:

… [in] the period between 1880 and 1920 … speculation about the telephone was that it would speed up life, eliminate regional accents, create a greater democracy and have people working out of their homes. … The people who developed the telephone had a clear sense of what the device would be used for. “It was emphasized as a practical device for practical use in business,” Fischer explained. “People, particularly women, were discouraged from using the telephone for ‘mere idle gossip.”

[Via: How the Telephone Brought Societal Change.]

Now we know that sometimes that ‘idle gossip’ is the lifeline that can help those who are housebound and isolated, and that the phone is an invaluable business tool.

Similarly with Twitter, which is another, increasingly popular, communications tool.

It can fulfil that role of simply connecting people, as Maria Langer explains:

Twitter is my virtual water cooler, where I keep track of the lives of other geeks like me. I might work alone in a home-based office, but my Twitter friends are always just a mouse click away with links, jokes, and comments to share.

And it can be much more meaningful, as Josh Catone describes in The Rise of Twitter as a Platform for Serious Discourse:

Twitter … is being used as a first alert mechanism for the dissemination of news and for immediate discussion surrounding that news. …

Why Twitter Works for News

It’s fast. Increasingly mainstream news reporters and bloggers are utilizing Twitter to put up news tid bits as they happen, and commentary as it pops into their heads. …

It’s two-way. Unlike TV or newspaper, Twitter allows for a conversation. …

It fills a void. As Ruffini points out, Twitter is built for the new news cycle. “Traditional news operated on a 24-hour cycle. Blogs shortened this to minutes and hours. Twitter shortens it further to seconds,” …

Twitter is being used more and more for mainstream news coverage. KPBS News San Diego uses Twitter to put out updates about stories, for example, and during the California wildfires last fall it was a must read. The potential for Twitter to be used for news dissemination is something the site’s founders realized early on during an earthquake.

[Via Read/WriteWeb: The Rise of Twitter as a Platform for Serious Discourse.]

It was very hard to abbreviate what Josh wrote — you really should read his whole article as there’s excellent content in there.

I’m not convinced that ‘news’ in itself is such an important thing, but I see two differences from traditional TV, radio or newspaper news headlines:

1. Anyone who can access the Internet can use Twitter. That means that real people who are experiencing events can give an immediate and direct account of what’s going on. We don’t need to rely on journalists deciding whether or not we’re important, mangling the names, the events, the activities, filtering our words. We the public have direct access to the rest of the world. We can also directly receive immediate feedback and commentary.
2. The ‘news’ is generally about someone else somewhere else. Twitter gives a real voice to real people, to our friends, family and acquaintance. It’s very specific.

Have you explored Twitter yet? If not, sign up and make a start with the ‘eating breakfast’ style of tweet. Get a feel for it. Then you can start to use it for ’serious’ purposes.

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