This article was published on September 9, 2009

The Evolving Nature of Twitter


The Evolving Nature of Twitter

twitter_question_markWhat the hell are you supposed to say in that large text field at Twitter? You know, the one that says “What are you doing?”.

It doesn’t seriously expects us to tell it what we are doing now, right? If we would take that (too) serious the only message you would EVER see is “Entering text into a field at Twitter”.

Taking it less literally we would still be tweeting the most boring stuff. And that is exactly what most people’s reaction is when they learn about Twitter.

The most heard objection to joining Twitter is “I don’t want to tell the whole world what I’m doing all the time”. Of course, a few weeks later they join anyway and find out that THAT is not what people are actually using Twitter for. You could say that the question Twitter is asking is misleading.

So what are we supposed to say in that large text field at Twitter?

Once upon a time we told Twitter what we did.
Now we use Twitter to find out what to do.

We find out how people judge movies, what music is cool, what websites and blogs we should visit and what quotes are funny.

I just did small and unscientific poll and analyzed the last 26 tweets from the people I follow. None of them answer the question Twitter asks. This is what questions they are answering instead:

What article should I read: 10 tweets
What photo should I see: 5 tweets
What are you doing later this week: 3 tweets
What do you want to complain about: 3 tweets
What movie should I see: 2 tweets
What should I listen too: 1 tweet

Only two tweets answered the basic “What are you doing” question. Guess this Joy of Tech cartoon was out of fashion before it was even published:

joyoftech

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