I found myself in a situation where I needed to describe Twitter to a friend yesterday. She is what I classify as a regular internet user – knows about and uses the ‘big’ sites – Facebook, YouTube, Google & Gmail (but has no knowledge of all their other services).
I tried explaining how it works – you send an sms, and it is broadcast, and others can read and respond to it – but the look on her face was telling me I wasn’t doing a very good job.
I eventually said “It’s like IM for status updates”. That seemed to get the idea across, but I don’t think it describes the service very well.
I can’t believe I don’t know how to explain Twitter despite using the service for something like 3 years now…. but then, it’s one of those things that needs to be experienced to be understood isn’t it?
Help me out please – how do you explain Twitter to someone new to it?
It’s a service to help you find people who share the same interests than you and communicate with them in less than 140 characters…
As you said, it needs to be experienced to be understood (or not!).