Just been told about a really neat explanation of Twitter. This is a short animated video by Lee Le Fever at Common Craft, and makes a lot of sense.
I have still not signed up for Twitter, but have been learning a bit about it. Another description of it that I like is to see it as “group proprioception”. Proprioception is a sense that we all have. It is quite different to the five senses that we are more aware of. In fact, as Oliver Sacks explains in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, there are a number of senses that we are normally unaware of.
To understand this one, close your eyes, hold you arms out in front of you, then bring the tips of your two index fingers together. How did you do that? How did you know where your fingers were in relation to each other without being able to see them? Your brain just “knows” where all the parts of your body are at any point in time – that’s proprioception.
So Twitter is like knowing where all your friends are at any point of time, and what they are doing.
Am I going to sign up? I’ll have to think about that a bit more yet…
[…] Collaborative tools are all the rage at the moment. In my new role (and without corporate services to rely on) I have been finding great benefits in such things as DOPPLR, Skype, Google Docs, Google Calendar and yes, even Twitter (in spite of earlier doubts). In fact, Matt Moore and I spent a very fruitful few hours the other day working together on Google Docs and Twitter to put the final touches on a 4,000 word magazine article (on Knowledge Management for B2B Sales Teams). […]