Twitter is unlike any other social network I belong to.

It’s not about sharing photos with friends or writing on someone’s wall or about resumes or news. Twitter is a very organic social networking experience, where people microblog their thoughts and lives. Virtually every other social network I belong to revolves around connecting with people I’ve met — friends, family, business contacts.

Twitter is not about connecting with people. It’s about connecting with ideas. If you only follow my blog and not my Twitter feed, you’ll miss many of my thoughts and ideas.

Throughout the day I might have a thought worth sharing, but that doesn’t always mean it’s worth a full-fledged blog post or that I even want to take the time to write a blog post. Sometimes I just need to get something out in 140 characters or less.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Twitter is how I have never met any of my Twitter followers (or the people I follow) in real life. In stark contract, I have met the vast majority of my Facebook friends. In fact, I don’t publicize that I have been a longtime, avid Facebook user because I view Facebook as a way to keep in touch with my friends and family.

I don’t use Facebook for professional reasons, nor do I use it to meet new people. Twitter is the opposite. I use Twitter to share my thoughts with like-minded individuals, and I am always searching for new people to connect with.

Many of the people I follow and my followers are my intellectual friends. Twitter is a powerful idea, albeit 140 characters at a time. It’s character limit may seem constricting at first, but it is a great introduction to blogging and online community building.

If there was one social network journalism students could learn the most from it would be Twitter. In fact, many professional publications are now using Twitter to share news with readers. I follow Guardian Tech on Twitter.

I invite you all to Tweet with me: http://twitter.com/jiconoclast

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 1:15 pm and is filed under social networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.