Last week, I mentioned Twitter 101, an introduction to all things Twitter at Loyola. I now feel semi-hosed and apologize to anyone who got involved with this through me and shares that feeling. Really, I came away with the impression that the whole event was a ploy by Naked Pizza to get 150 people to try their pizza, and anything having to do with Twitter was secondary. It was only discussed for its marketing possibilities (for as long as I was there, but some who stayed say that remained the thrust), and one of the things that most needed to be addressed wasn’t. “Twitter expert” Tiffany Starnes spoke of how to Twitter, but no one I heard talked about how to read Twitter.

Those who are skeptical can’t see the forrest for the reports of what someone had for breakfast. I think of Twitter as a scanner or CD radio – a lot of information’s being put in the world through it, and if you try to follow it too closely, you’ll get lost in the details. I tend to monitor it, skimming – something easily done when the posts are 140 characters or less.

In this way, Twitter mirrors the Internet, where the interesting and valuable is surrounded by continent-sized clumps of trivia. It also, like much of the Internet, represents efforts to get conversations started by putting thoughts into the world and hoping for a reply. I won’t argue with anyone who considers this a lot of talking with little listening, but since listening is also a dying art, I wouldn’t hold the marginal coherence of the tweets crossing your screen against Twitter; what you’re reading is a few hundred people trying to start conversations at the same time.

Carl Wilson at Zoilus.com wrote of his preference for Facebook, and I find it more satisfying in ways. But because I know everybody who is following me on Facebook, it feels insular. We might not all share values and backgrounds, but I know what values and backgrounds I share with each of my Facebook friends. There are more people I don’t know following me on Twitter than people that I do know, making the experience closer to a reach out into worlds and communities I don’t know. That doesn’t automatically make the twitterers’ breakfast interesting, but there’s also the possibility that it might be.