I’d recommend you pop over to Irene Koehler’s blog and read this post:
Moments and The Power of Not Laughing
Irene has articulated something which I really love about twitter, one of the subtle qualities which outside observers miss.
Twitter enables us to have small, regular and relatively unrestricting contact with a huge range of people. Yet people who ‘get’ twitter find they develop very strong relationships with some of their contacts on the platform.
With each tiny conversation, we learn more about each other, and relationships build with the people we have the strongest connections with. Through multiple iterations, we naturally filter the people we genuinely find a connection with, as we go along.
Our supportive contacts challenge us to be ourselves, to take the opportunities which come along. This helps us to be ourselves, it helps us grow.
Have you noticed this?
These strong connections are what make Twitter so valuable. Long may it continue.
I’ve met a number of people after connecting with them through Twitter and there are many contacts I look forward to meeting in the future. While relationships require more than Twitter alone (it is just a service after all), it is the simplicity of the tool which makes our effort to communicate so straightforward. No wonder we’re free to be ourselves.
Absolutely Martin, the tool simply helps us do it better.
Thank you for your contribution.
Su,
I’m so pleased that you thought enough of this post to share it. Of all the posts I’ve written, this was the most difficult as it was quite personal.
I agree that many miss the potential of developing real relationships through an iterative process on Twitter of brief tweets as we pass one another in the stream. You are one of the special gems I’ve been privileged to discover and get to know through our connection here. I hope we’ll have the chance to meet in person one day. In the meantime, I will continue to appreciate your great insight and humor virtually.
Irene
http://twitter.com/irenekoehler