I mean it’s not even a standard SMS length (which I believe is 160 characters, of course I’m happy to be told that I’m wrong.  Actually no I’m not, if you know better you can keep it to yourself), it’s certainly not an email (although being a man if I could find the emoticon for a grunt I could cut my emails in half!) and it is a long way from your average blog post.

So what on earth could you manage to convey in just those 140 characters?

Well thanks to the micro-blogging service Twitter in 140 characters you can say quite a lot!

• You can propose marriage
• Keep people up to date on the film Iron Man 2 from a very unique point of view
• Save people’s lives
• Get arrested
• Find out that the car has died at home and you are going to need a new battery

And that’s just scratching the very surface!

Everyone is talking about Twitter from Rove to Oprah and far be for me to argue with them, even Wolverine himself is getting in on the action!

So what about my examples?

Well it was reported that the potential first proposal on Twitter took place when this tweet (a tweet is a message on Twitter) was sent out:

To @emilychang – After fifteen years of blissful happiness I would like to ask for your hand in marriage? - http://twitter.com/maxkiesler/statuses/774352312

And then was answered with this tweet:

@maxkiesler – yes, i do! - http://twitter.com/emilychang/statuses/774352570

Awwwwww isn’t that sweet!

But didn’t you mention Iron Man 2!?  Well yes I did, because you can follow the Iron Man 2 director Jon Favreau as he makes the film and gives us very tiny insights into the process as he does it!

Saving lives?

During the devastating Victorian bush fires the Country Fire Authority kept people advised of alerts via their Twitter feed which was reTweeted (when you republish someone else’s Tweet) by many Australian Twitterers  (look that term could be made up – I don’t know what we call ourselves but it seems as good a term as any!).

Getting arrested?

In the ‘only in America’ category an Oklahoma City man announced on Twitter that he would turn an April 15 tax protest into a bloodbath?  He was arrested by the FBI.  Sadly I doubt this will be the last and certainly won’t only be in America

Car battery????

OK this is probably a more personal one, my wife dropped me off at the train station, got home and the car died. On my way into work I read about the dead battery and its replacement via Twitter on my iPhone.

Now Twitter is kind of like the Matrix, to fully understand Twitter you first must see it for yourself and I think everyone gets something a little different out of it.

Sign up an account and see how much you can say in only 140 characters!

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Plurk allows friends to reply to your posts so you can see something similar to a threaded discussion and that’s a great facility. The thing that made me give it up was that these discussions weren’t that interesting. I’m sorry but I’m not that interested in knowing that people have gotten out of bed, and that they are going shopping now, and all the minute details of their lives.

While I found some friends quite quickly on Plurk I also wasn’t part of the in crowd amongst my friends because I didn’t participate in the chatter. At least I think that’s why.  I didn’t reply to all posts because it’s a huge time waster. I found myself at work checking Plurk instead of working and it takes a lot longer to check all replies to various plurks than it does to scan through Twitter.

Having said that I’ve witnessed a really cohesive and supportive community emanating from my local Plurkers who have meetups all the time and that’s a good thing. I just couldn’t do it and maintain my real life as well.

I decided in the end that I could only maintain one platform, not two and at this stage Twitter’s the one for me.

How about you?

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For example I co-coordinate the local Canberra Twitter usergroup … basically a bunch of local Canberran Twitterers who get together for lunch or drinks every couple of months, and we usually have between 6 and 14 people turn up to those events. It’s a lot different from chatting via Twitter and can be occasionally awkward to meet someone you’ve been chatting to via Twitter for months and think you know them but when it comes to social small-talk you realise you know them in a different way to what’s applicable to that particular situation. You may know their day-to-day struggles they experience with their job but not even know if they’re married or have kids. But it’s nice to have a completely rounded relationship with people you consider friends … and so we have these meetings to put faces to names, real names to aliases.

Another such group is the local Canberra flickr photographers group. Just like the local Twitter group we’re not sponsored, endorsed or supported by flickr in any way. We all love flickr and it doesn’t bother us that we promote flickr and have built a massive community around flickr (over 600 members online with close to 70 people turning up for big events like the annual flickr gala) and get nothing back from them … though if anyone from flickr is listening and feels to support us it would be nice to have some financial support for events like our gala *grin*. But flickr was the hub that enabled local photographers to find each other and coordinate our regular meets – in fact our next meet is this Saturday for Floriade and the Nara Candle Festival in Canberra. Flickr has provided the platform for this interaction to a point but clearly many people want to take that further beyond the webpage and now some of us have close friendships that started offline and matured offline.

In fact I met my girlfriend through flickr as we are both members of the Canberra flickr photographers group – so for that, flickr, thank you!

Websites can only go so far and they shouldn’t try to cover off all interaction needs of their users but expect that offline communities will be spawned and attempt to facilitate and support that.

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