my twitter analogy: twarbucks

Twarbucks

What's twitter like? It's like you're sitting by yourself in a coffee shop, surrounded by a community of people.
"The role of 17th century coffee shops in creating a civic space and a commensurate sense of 'public opinion', and the importance of that for the growth of democracy, has been discussed by historians..." [1]

Twitter is the virtual coffee shop.
  • all around you, conversations
  • snippets reach your ears
  • you can sip slowly or drink it all in quickly
  • sometimes you focus your listening on an interesting snippet
  • sometimes you lean over and add a comment
  • sometimes the noise is too much and you tune out
  • sometimes you make new friends because you contributed to the verbal comm
  • though you may be sitting there "alone" with your laptop getting work done, you're not alone
  • being there is refreshing, a buzz, a lift in your day
  • if you say something interesting, it will get passed on for the enjoyment of others there
  • you can linger and enjoy the social networking, or you can leave
  • you can be productive while still catching snippets
  • you can stay aloof or participate
  • you're in touch with familiar strangers
  • you can be & feel anonymous or introduce yourself to any/all
  • you can trust and be trusted, respect and be respected, support and be supported
  • the longer you visit, the more at home you feel
  • the more you participate, the more you become part of the community
  • it quickly becomes part of your daily routine
  • it can get addictive
  • if you're too busy to go there, it will wait for you. Patiently, too. Absences don't count; presence is all that's recorded.
Substitute "twitter" for "coffee shops" in the following (and in any description of a coffee shop).
"Coffee shops, as meeting places, foster the spread of information. This occurs informally, as an inevitable result of gossip and socialising. ...As information passes through a social network, which no individual has a complete map of, so coffee shops become part of a system of distributed cognition..." [1]

"Because of its great acceptance in English society, by 1670 there was hardly a street in London without a coffee house. ...it became a popular social gathering spot, many of the intellectuals and literati of that era gathered in coffee houses." [2]

"...coffee houses...served as places for vital communication....Those more interested in radical politics would gather at the Cromwell coffee house and talk of revolution. ...Not all talk in the coffee houses were political. ...London merchants often spent the day there conducting their business and exchanging news about commerce". [2]

.....
1: Tom Stafford. Psychology in the coffee shop. July 2003. Retrieved March 4/09 from  http://www.idiolect.org.uk/docs/jan04/coffee.pdf
2: P. J. Gladnick. Defining intellectual ferment in coffee house culture. 2002. Retrieved on March 4/09 from http://www.essortment.com/all/defineintellec_rybo.htm