It’s often difficult to explain twitter to anyone who hasn’t tried it–what could possibly be the point of spitting out snippets the size of text messages several times a day to no one in particular? The idea of loose circles of people–either social or professional–using the service to coordinate group activities usually makes a bit of sense. But the appeal of non-directed updates about oneself can be difficult to understand (to get a feel for what this looks like, take a look at this excellent project–a stylized continuous display of what people are sending out right now).

Part of the challenge in appreciating twitter is realizing that it isn’t just a uniform neutral space, but a vast geography of diverse but overlapping social territories. Sometimes a handful of closely knit friends who associate regularly in other contexts form their own little community with its own little discussion. Sometimes a much larger community of practical strangers emerges around a common interest. But in general, no user is exists in only a single context–most people on twitter "follow" (receive updates from) users that aren’t followed by other people they follow. This might start to sound complicated, but it’s really not at all. Any social network (even your "real" one) is made up similar intersecting chains (photo from wikipedia).
 

The broader twitter network and the frequency with which many users update make it possible for some things to spread through and across discrete communities extremely quickly. Two very similar and very current little jokes that disseminated throughout twitter recently demonstrate this phenomenon and also give some insight into the character of the broader twitter community.

The first appeared almost immediately after the announcement of Sarah Palin as the Republican nominee for vice president. Very quickly, twitter became flooded with "tweets" (individual twitter messages) of the form "Little known fact: Sarah Palin…" and usually some sort of surreally exaggerated praise of her (meant as a sort of satire or pastiche of the GOP’s enthusiasm for her). Sometimes, however, messages using the same construction make a serious comment about Palin as a candidate (there’s also a particularly odd in-between category). This is still going on, and can be watched in real time. The pace has greatly slowed, however, from its peak in the days right after the announcement. At that time, the trend became so pervasive so quickly that it started getting attention from outside of twitter. Blogs and Internet news sites started reporting on the phenomenon, trying to trace it back to its origin, and encouraging people to play along.

But now the Wired science blog is reporting that a similar viral joke is spreading through twitter regarding the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator that has recently begun its first stage of operation. This might all seem not worth the notice, but something very interesting is happening here: patterns of activity on twitter that spread and grow across typically defined communities sometimes reach some sort of critical mass and begin getting attention outside of twitter–usually on blogs.

This should be a recognizable phenomenon. It’s familiar now to talk about "the blogosphere" or "what the blogs are saying"–if there’s enough blog-chatter about a political rumor to reach a certain threshold, the fact that the discussion is taking place can end up getting reported on cable news. That’s only possible because the network of interlinked blogs (and bloggers) allows things to spread rapidly, provided that enough members of the community decide that it should. Similarly, a little humor trend can fan out through "the twitterverse" if enough users decide to latch on to it. When that happens, it becomes a trend worth commenting on in a medium higher up the food-chain.

Twitter incorporates elements from blogs and from social networks. There are aspects that have to do with content and aspects that have to do with the nature of the social configuration. Aside from emphasizing these facts, the above little anecdote also shows something about the character of the twitter using community. These two somewhat silly little cascades both have somewhat serious topics: electoral politics and particle physics. In each case, enough users have both the interest in common and a particular comedic sensibility in common for the joke to become "visible" to the "outside" Internet.

Tracking product or brand discussions on twitter, or doing any other type of cultural study, may or may not have real payoffs–it depends on the case and the jury is still out on the general principle. But, as noted before, an important caveat to any sort of insights gleaned from twitter is that they’re coming from a world that is made up in large part of people with a very idiosyncratic collective mind. This means that if it’s worth it to try to understand what twitter is, it may not be enough to just know how it works. As is the case with blogs, the technology is important but you’ve also got to make an effort to understand the culture that is starting to grow up around it.