NPi founders blog

By Alexis Schroeder

Hear me out.

Like many folks, I came to Twitter rather late in the game. I didn’t get the point. Despite never having visited the site, I figured I already spent enough time online and worried about Twitter being more about ego than providing real value. In all truthfulness, more than anything I imagine it had to do with not wanting to wrap my head around yet another new thing technology-related thing. For the first time in my life, at just 25, I had already begun to feel out of the loop when it came to the Internet and technology. It didn’t feel good, so rather unconsciously I decided I wanted to stick with the old because it’s what I knew and felt comfortable with. The “old” being Facebook and email.

But then that pesky voice in my head whispered, “How about trying it before you knock it?” So I visited the site, created a username, and began “tweeting” and more interesting, began reading through others’ tweets. What’s a tweet? It’s 140 character or less sentence or statement that you share with everyone who opts to “follow” you on Twitter. So I began following people and reading their tweets and tweeting myself—sharing links to articles, thoughts about my work and what I am learning through my work, quotes I find particularly relevant and inspiring, etc. And then of course people began following me. I should also say you can “retweet” what other folks post simply by copying and pasting their post and typing “RT” before it. What’s the point of all this? Twitter is not unlike the real, offline world in which you meet people you’re interested in talking to and knowing and keeping in touch with. It’s just another way to get and stay connected—something that comes naturally to human beings and has obvious value. What makes it different, how it adds new value is that it opens up communication channels you almost certainly wouldn’t have otherwise. In so doing, it connects you with individuals and ideas and networks you wouldn’t have access to otherwise. And if you’re thoughtful about how you interact on Twitter, these end up being just the sort of connections you seek, but aren’t quite sure how to make happen. For example, through Twitter, I recently connected with Melissa Richer (@ayllu), the Executive Director of the Ayllu Initiative, an organization that explores how to replicate small businesses proven to solve root causes of poverty, and Martin Montero (@montero), Co-Founder of the Austin Social Innovation Hub, an organization that catalyzes innovative solutions to social problems—two people doing similar work around poverty and social entrepreneurship as I am.

Here’s how Twitter works:

1) You follow people (or organizations or magazines with real folks behind them) you’re interested in following because you like what they have to say and share. Tweets often include links to other articles, websites, resources, notices about upcoming events, etc.

Examples:

acumenfund: Important SSIR article on the nonprofit starvation cycle–breaking down belief that overhead is bad http://ow.ly/l6×8

JeanneDasaro: MIT Enterprise Forum 1 day online course: Conscious Capitalism- How Companies Profit from Purpose and Passion http://tinyurl.com/maa8pw 

swissmiss: The New York 100: innovative, creative people and organizations. http://bit.ly/ucMLM (via @Brokleyn)

2) People follow you if they’re interested in what you have to say and share.

3) If you follow someone and they follow you back, you can now direct message them. In other words, you can send a private message that is only shared between the two of you. I’ve used this to tell someone a little bit more about myself and my work, to send my email address to someone, and to set up a face-to-face meeting, for example.

For someone who majored in government and cares a heck of a lot about making sure people have access to a wide variety of news, information, people, and ideas, there’s something about Twitter that feels intensely democratic to me. Apart from the digital divide—think about how many people have little to no access to the internet at all—for people who do have semi-regular or regular access to the Internet at least, Twitter builds much-needed community and opens up doors. As Thomas Crampton says, Facebook indeed cares more about who you know while Twitter is all about what you know. I’d also add what you care about. Anyway, it’s a wildly refreshing idea, isn’t it?

In April 2009, Katie Couric said, “I Twitter and blog very selectively… Some of it is so inane and narcissistic and bizarre, I don’t quite get it. I don’t know why anyone would want to read it, much less why I would want to write it,” and, “I don’t think anybody gives a rat’s ass whether I am about to eat a tuna sandwich.” This is a fair reaction if you’re paying attention primarily to the folks who have little to nothing interesting or useful to say. But if you look at the many other ways Twitter is being used, it absolutely isn’t about tuna sandwiches. It’s about sharing what you’re working on and thinking about, which people and resources and ideas you find helpful and think may be helpful to others, and connecting with folks who share the same passions and concerns you do. So while Twitter may be a tough sell—it certainly was for me—I think it’s a tough sell for different reasons than we may think it is. Rather than being pointless and largely driven by narcissism, it merely has the potential for being these things. Like nearly everything, it’s what you do with it. While Katie Couric is entitled to her opinion, this distinction is an important one to make I think when you’re a media professional with influence over millions of people worldwide.

Twitter is a tough sell because it’s yet another new thing to figure out during a time of incredible cultural change on many different fronts, and adapting to change is no easy thing. The moment I acknowledged this for myself, the easier it became to login to Twitter, jump in, and start finding my way.

First image by Melissa Hom for New York Magazine. Second image by antony_mayfield, Flickr Creative Commons.