For those of you who don't "get" Twitter

It’s the little things that bind friendships closer. That quirky look on his face as he tells you about the bug that landed on his finger. The fact that in the middle of your phone call he suddenly stopped and calmly said, “the cat just horked on my foot.”

I don’t love you because of the valuable information you tell me. I love you because of all the other things you tell me.

When we call each other on the phone we ask what’s been going on and we don’t just want to know about meetings or “important” things, we want to hear you excitedly talk about that new band you just discovered, or how your girlfriend dyed her hair green “because she likes hippos” and how you still don’t have a clue what that means.

I don’t care what you had for breakfast, but I love to hear that you “…just had the most awesome waffles EVAR”

There are so many little moments like this that fill up our lives. Moments that are odd to relate later. Imagine you’re on the phone with that friend, “A bug landed on my finger yesterday”…. what do you say to that? When it happened it would have been a curious oddity. The next day it’s… just “um… ok….”

These are the reasons you should care about Twitter. To share those little thoughts that make you you, and make your friends enjoy hanging with you. The little things that bind friendships together. You don’t necessarily expect anyone to respond to your comment about awesome waffles either, and it doesn’t matter if anyone does, because you’ve shared with the people who care about you, or find you interesting, and they’ll do the same.

Twitter lets us share these little things with each other without making our friends stop and respond to us immediately in IM. But, there’s a flaw… initially Twitter is this website where you go occasionally and see all those little thoughts too late… If you load the web page daily the curious bug landing has already turned into “um… ok…” But, using one of the many excellent apps for your desktop or phone changes everything.

Now when your friend mentions that their cat horked on their foot you know about it immediately just like it was an IM and can shake your head at their continued bad luck, or comment that your cat did the same thing last week… Now it’s not a collection of odd comments with no real value. Now, it’s a real-time window into the lives of your friends and the people who interest you.