“What is Twitter?”  That seems to be the question that everyone has been asking me lately.  With Facebook’s attempted $500 million bid to purchase twitter rejected, I figured I would take the time to answer that question.

The problem is – it’s not easily answered.  Some people call it “micro-blogging.”  I’ve been calling it “text messages + away messages + blogging on steroids…with only 140 characters” to those who don’t understand what “micro-blogging” is.  In reality, it’s everything you want it to be and probably more.

In literature, there was this famous group of writer’s called “oulipo.”  Oulipo stands for “Ouvrioir de literature potentielle” – which is French for “workshop of potential literature.”  They used self-imposed constraints to create works and, as they saw it, deliver on the missing potential of literature.  The reason that I bring this up is that, for the most part, Twitter does the same thing…

The constraint of 140 characters forces all users to speak simply – to make and deliver their point in the simplest of languages.  One of the major benefits of blogging was that you didn’t pay for space.  Unlike print media, there was no limitations to how long an article was, how flowery your language can be, or how many tangents one can go on.  While all those are great benefits – if you’ve ever been an editor you understand the pain of removing a beautifully written passage because it doesn’t work with the space you’re given – they also were detriments.  Blogging, in many ways, started to run rampant.  There was no structure.  No creative controls.  The floodgates of wordplay opened up, and readers were left drowning in a sea of unnecessary words for the author to make his point (there’s a joke in there somewhere).

Communication on Twitter is fast paced and universal.  News travels faster on Twitter than any other source simply because there is no space for extras.  You can only get to the point in 140 characters.  As businesses start using Twitter, those manned by real people who care will be noticed not because of their best practices, but because in 140 characters those who don’t understand and “spam” or use it to announce press releases will stand out – in a bad way.

So what does this tell us about Twitter itself?  Twitter itself is only a tool.  Like a blank canvas, it ultimately is what you make of it.  In fact, the more you use Twitter, the more it will represent your true intentions.  If you want to use it for personal use – a hundred tweets would ultimately reveal a lot about how you desire to be seen.  If you want to use it for promoting your business and see it simply as a marketing tool – those hundred tweets will make that completely transparent.  It’s these reasons, and more, that make Twitter something that some business should choose to avoid – the businesses afraid of who they are and how people see them.

Twitter also is about conversation.  It’s two-way, three-way — more and more depending on the amount of followers you have.  Like any medium, they’re not always listening.  But, as your tweets resonate in the respective corners of the Twitterverse, they reveal something about the person participating in them.  Are you helpful?  Did you learn to share?  Do you Tweet for yourself or your followers?   What are you doing?

Ultimately, Twitter is the potential of its users – like Oulipo. Through constraint we can trigger new ideas and inspire us to push our potential further than before.  To me, that’s what Twitter is…