What is it with Twitter? Or more specifically, why don’t people understand it? Or, even more specifically, why are those people still so fascinated by it? Are they mystified? Outraged? If they don’t like it, perhaps they’re the ones who should turn the computer off and go outside…

That wasn’t a very well constructed opening paragraph, but at least it contained fully formed words RTHR THN TXT SPK, that’s a big bug bear of Twitter-haters.

It’s generated a lot of interest in the press as it goes mainstream, but what is Twitter exactly? The image above is from a recent article in The Sunday Times, which I would have expected to have more of a clue really.

They’re calling it a micro-blogging service, but it isn’t really something that’s easily classified because it’s not a new type of anything, it’s the first of something else. People have come to understand blogs, but they’re hard work, you have to write proper sentences and everything, you have to have a point of view and a (yawn) purpose. You don’t need any of these things with Twitter, you just write up to 140 characters about whatever you like, what you’re eating or thinking, what you’ve just read, or just restate someone else’s comment which you found interesting (the fabled ReTweet). It’s all very confusing, except that it’s not, it really isn’t. You write stuff when you feel like it and read other people’s stuff when you don’t. That’s it. Really.

If anything, it’s too simple. People expecting a hugely complex technological and sociological phenomenon are often left baffled by the straightforwardness of it all with a feeling that they must have misunderstood something. It’s just people typing. Any criticism of Twitter’s content is only really a criticism of real people’s preoccupations. So, the the question shouldn’t be ‘What is Twitter?’ but ‘What’s the point?’

The service itself is simple, and the point is – well that’s the hardest part for the Daily Mail to grasp. For some, the point is to get hits on their website, for others, it’s to tell the world about their marathon training, business trip or what music they’re listening to. One guy is trying to travel for a month purely through the benevolent help of fellow Twitter users. It’s good for asking advice. (see crowdsourcing) Celebrities often want to plug their newest TV show/podcast/gig and celebrity fans want to get a word from their idol. Brands are all being told they need a Twitter channel to throw out messaging like there’s no tomorrow. The spam has started, the PR people are stirring, anyone can use it to prove they ‘get it’…

Photo by Andrew Grill

All this noise is like birdsong, you only need to pick out the bits which prick your ears, you’re not supposed to interpret it all or even value everything. It’s the web equivalent of when CB radios were the thing years ago, listen in or contribute, but understand that a lot of it will be other people’s banality. It’s social soup, and swimming in it teaches you a little bit about other people’s experiences and opinions by osmosis. But I guess newspapers aren’t interested in other people’s opinions are they? Unless it’s Simon Cowell’s considered policy on tap dancing dogs.

Photo by whatleydude

Most of the newspapers here in the UK give the impression of not liking Twitter much. Maybe it’s just the phenomenon of celebrity Twittering they don’t like, which is strange because surely it does a little bit of their work for them like copying their latest essay from Google. Twitter certainly feeds the cult of celebrity, which is newspaper oxygen. The 3am girls can have an early night now and just subscribe to @cheryl_ann_cole’s Twitter feed. At one point @stephenfry was the second most followed person on Twitter, just ‘behind’ @BarackObama, enthusiastically raving about the Apple iPhone, quoting Oscar Wilde and proclaiming fellow celebrities ‘poppets’. That’s Stephen of course, not Barack. These people are now using Twitter to set their own media agenda, and the papers had got used to doing that for them. In the Daily Mail’s case, perhaps the hate stems from the imposter who for several months went by the username ‘DailyMail’ before the newspaper realised Twitter even existed and moved in to stop the parody. Newspapers don’t like rival broadcasters and we’re all broadcasters now.

Even Time Magazine couldn’t see the funny side of Peter Serafinowicz’s tweet:

“Went to the gym this morning. As I left, everyone said I was the best!”

Peter’s response to their subsequent enquiry resulted in a catastrophic sense of humour failure by people desperate to read meaning into delightful randomness.

The inevitable Twitter backlash will only be fueled by other envious channels, frantically grasping for a handhold on the media agenda. And it won’t work, because Twitter will be the best place to read all about it.

And they love it really. After all, it’s column inches isn’t it, and those headlines – they write themselves. It’s something quaint old newspapers can use to inhabit the cutting edge, they get to actually introduce Twitter to the less web savvy in the nation like they found it first. It’s print looking down on pixel. The problem is, with the zeitgeist seized, and the double page spread booked in, they don’t all actually know what to say. The journalistic autopilot engages and charts a course for familiar territory. Reading some journalists’ appraisals of Twitter is a little bit like your dad turning up at the school disco to teach you to dance.

Of course, at the same time, they’re all using it. Papers aren’t selling so well these days you see…