Why Twitter is Popular

And of course, I use that term "popular" loosely, as it is only popular in certain circles. Namely, college/high schoolers, journalists all hopped-up on Red Bull and Web 2.o, and celebrities. And not everyone is so hip on it.

And after observing the two major competing entities, Facebook and Twitter, for the past few months, I've arrived at an interesting conclusion.

People like Twitter because they don't like commitments.

Now, this isn't a whiny Sex-And-The-City argument about why men (or women) can't get emotionally close to someone. Not at all.

Although perhaps it is indicative.

You see, the reason people are hyping Twitter over Facebook is that it's a lot less personal. You post a tweet, you read other people's tweets, you retweet here and there. Direct tweets do happen, but only every once in a while, and they are nowhere near the main purpose for the service.

Facebook, on the other hand, truly lives up to its branding as a Social Medium. You talk to people via walls and messages, you start conversations, you read info on people (a.k.a. facebookstalking), you look at photo albums. It's all about interacting with your friends, with other people.

And that, of course, takes a lot more time and commitment. (It's also a time black hole for those trying to procrastinate.) It takes time and initiative to reply to that wall post (sorry, mom), and it takes time to look through someone's pictures. True, 60 percent of the time that's utterly boring and useless, but occasionally you do want to see pictures of your friend's vacation or wedding, and occasionally you do talk to people about important things via the chat or wall posts.

And maybe that's exactly why Twitter is increasing in popularity. People don't have to do as much interaction as they do via Facebook. And for those who are extraordinarily busy, that's fine. Please understand, I'm not railing on people that use Twitter and calling them commitment haters, by any means.

I'm simply observing the different kinds of interactions that take place. I wrote earlier that Twitter was just Facebook Lite (which I still kind of think), but I think a better title would be Facebook Quick N' Dirty.

To quote Seinfeld, "Not that there's anything wrong with that!" It's just different usages for different purposes. It'll be interesting to see where this whole social media experiment leads us.