140 Characters — The Number 1 Reason Why We Love It
May 14th, 2009 by David Svet
The skeptics hope that Twitter will fail almost as much as Rush Limbaugh gloats of wanting the President of the United States to fail. Thankfully, most of us know a winner when we see one. So, what is it about that stream of 140 character tweets that we love so much? How can something so fleeting be so gratifying for some and so maddening for others?
The skeptics are put off by the flow of the stream. It’s too much. It’s a bunch of inane chatter about nothing — a huge waste of time. The faithful are just the opposite, often unable to walk away, seemingly addicted. They both touch on the answer — time.
Twitter’s 140-character stream gives us time, the scarcest of all commodities. We are all strapped for time. We all have shorter and shorter attention spans with more things begging for our focus every day. Twitter works because it gives us the ability to quickly focus and make decisions. A focused Twitter stream lets us quickly scan a massive amount of information and quickly decide if we want to know more. When the answer is yes we can click on a link for more information. When the answer is no, the stream moves on.
Twitter isn’t a waste of time — it’s the gift of time. Is it any wonder that people with open minds love being able to digest so much information so fast while the luddites spew their scorn? I really don’t have time for that.
