I get it! Twitter is a Database Index! ...until I find a better analogy

Do You Use Twitter? What Is It? What Is It For?

I've recently started using Twitter (@bobgillvan) to try and learn what all the fuss is about. Until recently, all I've known about twitter is that all my TV shows have weird hashtags in the corner and that has something to do with Twitter. When I started asking friends, "Do you use Twitter? What is it for?" I got a variety of answers...

    "I use it to stay in touch with other moms"
    "I use it to promote my business"
    "I use it to get news"

This didn't really help me. I still wasn't sure what all the fuss was about. I use Facebook regularly and I like the features it has... but Twitter was still confusing.

Twitter As A Stream of Conversations

Someone said to me, "Twitter is all about a stream of conversations". This helped. I started thinking of a large convention hall. I visualized 1000 people at some kind of convention all in the same room. I started thinking about what that would look like and how people would be acting. We've all been in situations with large groups of people, so I was able to just recall my own experiences in large gatherings. If there was a presentation, most, folks would be quiet and listening to one speaker. Without a presentation, it's just a bunch of people in a room. Conversations come up very naturally, for a variety of reasons. There is usually some kind of shared interest that brought these people to the same room in the first place.

Let's explore an example ...a Snowboard Show. It's a trade show where everyone related to skiing and snowboarding would come to get some deals on new gear or lift passes, and generally see what's new. If I walked around, I would pass by and overhear many conversations. People talking about different products, what they want to have for lunch, where they parked, where they want to go next, what they thought of the last presentation, etc. At any point, if I hear something interesting, I'll probably stop and listen for a while. This may sound like a simple point, but I think it's important. As people join a conversation, they tend to join as a listener first. Maybe the conversation is between a salesperson and potential buyer. The buyer is asking questions and the salesperson is trying to answer them. I don't really have a question, but I'm interested to hear the exchange. There is a natural limit to the number of people who can listen to the conversation. As people are further away, they can't hear anyone speaking. Furthermore, as more people talk, its hard to hear each person. It just sounds like noise.

At this point, I started feeling closer to understanding what all the fuss is about. Twitter is like a big room where we can engage in new conversations in a natural way... listening first, then slowly becoming more, or less, engaged depending on what we choose. So, it's really just a stream of conversations that we can all participate in, right? Well, not really.

Twitter As A Database Index

When chatting about my findings (in person) with a friend, they told me I was still missing something important. I didn't capture the network aspect of it. Twitter is not just a bunch of conversations, there are links or connections to make it easier. Now that I was confused again, I asked more questions to try and understand what he meant. I don't need to listen to all the conversations on Twitter. I would lose my job and have to sift through mountains of garbage to find a small piece of useful information. Google already uses the same principle to give great search results. Google is based on the PageRank algorithm. Simply put, if many websites point to www.blah.com for XYZ, then www.blah.com is the best resource if someone searches for XYZ. They've made it smarter because now they know what other people have choosen, given a previous search. Over time, the combination will give the 'best' result for a given search.

That's when it dawned on me that Twitter is a database index. Twitter let's my network choose the best items for my review. It's like a natural search filter. I don't see everything in my Twitter feed, just the stuff that has made it into my network. Google indexes websites using references. Twitter indexes conversations using references. For now, I'll try this analogy to see if it works. Does anyone else have an analogy that might help me understand Twitter? Now that I'm using it, my purpose of finding a good analogy is not for my own education. I want to be able to concisely explain Twitter when someone asks me, "Do you use it? What is it? What is it for?"