Twitter is not a chat
That statement has been creating some controversy but I will continue to stand by it. Twitter is not a chat. Twitter is a micro-blog, twitter is a broadcast, twitter is NOT a chat. Here’s why:
When I post an update to Twitter, or tweet, it is broadcast to everyone who is following me as well as publicly through the public timeline and my public twitter home page and any and all RSS subscribers of my Twitter account.
The whole @username thing that people use on Twitter to let someone know their tweet is directed to them was never intended by the folks at Twitter and in fact they found it rather irksome. The direct message exists so that you may carry on conversations over Twitter should you chose to do so without broadcasting your entire one on one conversation to the public and anyone following you.
Remember that new feature where you can chose how you see replies? It was put into effect because people got sick of seeing everyone’s public conversations that they shouldn’t have had to as well as all the one sided conversations filling up their SMS and webpage timeline.
Back and forth @ messaging on Twitter is like sitting at a restaurant and being forced to listen to the couple at the table next to you talk too loud about personal things or even worse, you only are on one side of the conversation like being stuck behind someone at the store who is talking on their phone and you can’t help but overhear since you are in line too.
Twitter @ messages aren’t always that uncomfortable. Sometimes there is a public conversation going on or you just want to shout a quick reply from a generally public question… there are many situations where the @ message is perfectly acceptable. When isn’t it acceptable? When that is all you are doing is carrying on a bunch of public conversations that really should be private. There are just some things no one really cares about and once you get too many back and forth @ messages no one really cares that isn’t involved. If you are sending messages back and forth to one or two people on Twitter wouldn’t it be easier to take it to IM rather than trying to keep it to 140 characters or less? Too many @ messages are just as tacky as doing that whole “reply to all” in email when you are talking to just one person on the list.
Twitter is a blog that has implemented extremely short blog post restrictions therefore creating a microblog that users can subscribe to with or without an RSS reader. Twitter is a broadcast mechanism. While some Twitter posts tend to foster conversations, it is still not a chat.