Is twitter the latest thing? Or is it an ancient thing, writ new? I argue the latter.

I was reading a blog post (after randomly finding it on a twitter feed that I don’t follow but a friend does - how’s that for indirect links?) and someone analyzed (and self deprecated) his twittering, inspired, it seems, by “an “e-card he had seen.

A visitor (friend of his, perhaps) posted a comment, asking why all the interest in twitter? He also noted that hardly anyone in the general public was twittering, but then wondered if the whole world would soon be reduced to 5 word snips of conversation.

I was initially provoked by the non sequiter in the comment (since, if no-one is doing it, how would the “whole world” be affected?) but then thought a bit more. What is it about twitter?

The first and easiest explanation is that twitter is just SMS (short message service, for the mobile/cell-challenged) but remade for the web. And, in fact, many people use their cell phone and SMS messages to the service to post “tweets” as they are called.

Fewer read twitter postings on their phone, although it is possible, either by visiting the site on a mobile browser (try http://m.twitter.com) or having them directed into your phone as SMS messages.

But having it on your phone is dangerous and expensive if you follow a lot of people and don’t have a plan that includes a LOT of messages (check out this post about the true cost of SMS, which is zero to the provider and atrocious on a per bit basis to the customer, but that’s another story…).

In terms of the worries about this affecting literary skills all over the globe, the commenter answers his own question. No, the future will not be reduced to 5 word sentences, since not everyone or everything is a tweet. And many people AREN’T doing it.

And even if they were, as I will argue below, that’s what conversations are all about and that hasn’t reduced us to imbeciles (yet).

But think of it this way - almost the entire world IS sending text messages on their phones (3.3 billion phones at latest count). Latest estimates have 8 billion messages being sent every single day.

It can be argued that Twitter is a web-based adaptation of SMS (including the zany character limit). The service is well suited to the “sitting at my computer all day with an internet connection and the ability to define my own productivity/activity” type of person. In other words, bloggers and other cube-nerds.

But that begs the question of “what is it about SMS“? Why the popularity?

For them (ahem, us), twitter is the chit chat that regular people get while they are working.

Ever spend any time on a road crew or a construction gang or working in a hair dressing salon or a restaurant? The “twittering” (i.e., short snippets of socializing) is constant.

Twitter isn’t a new form of communication, it is a new technology that facilitates a very old form of communication. The background gossip, views, opinions, observations that you utter while you work and that help pass the day and keep you in sync with your fellow human beings.

And unlike SMS, it is free. Free in the sense that matters today: it doesn’t get more expensive the more you use it and it doesn’t require an incremental investment. In other words, you can use what you already have at hand. Like conversation.

So, twitter isn’t a revolution, it is human communication at its most basic form. But it is different:

• it is global, which nattering while you dig a ditch never was
• it is archived, which hair salon gossip never should be
• it is hypermediated with links to photos, videos, and web sites in a way that you certainly can’t do while you serve up a no fat latte or fries with that.
• it is searchable in real time (see the phenomenon of twemes.com, as an example), which means the cacophony can be filtered.

Oh yes. There is something to Twitter, all right. It is both foundational and inherent to humans in that it is conversations and at the same time building on those desires and practices and enabling them with 21st century abilities.