I have pondered why Twitter and the likes have become so popular. To understand why this is so I had to think back to the early nineties when web-page embedded chat rooms were really popular. If you remember these early chat clients you will remember going into chat rooms, usually focused around an interest or topic, and watching people's conversations. You will remember picking people that were interesting based on their conversations and just jumping in. I remember being able to focus on several interesting people and having multiple conversations with them amongst many people conversing. Those were the days!

Then came the chat clients, like ICQ and AOL instant messaging. Slowly that old school chatting went away and was replaced with “search for people based on criteria“ or add only people you actually know. Searching for people because they live in the same state or because they too like cats just doesn't work as well as jumping into a conversation where you get a feel for the person's personality. Honestly, searching for people based on criteria and asking for a chat request is no different to me than picking a number from the phone book, because they live in your state, and calling the person and trying to start a dialog – you will likely get a click. Add the pervs, idiots, and spammers popping up chat requests and the whole concept of meeting people via chat clients dies.

So how does Twitter fit in you ask. Simple, humans are social creatures and we want to meet people, we want to chat with new people, people that interest us! Twitter brings back the ability to meet people in the same way the old chat rooms did. The computer loses us the ability to see and smell, which are factors in why we choose one person over another, but conversation also helps us make decisions about who we interact with. Twitter is nothing more to me than an old web based chat client with the rooms feature removed and a character limit tacked onto the chat console, but even in it's simplicity it gives us the ability to simply chat with total strangers without all the fear or annoyance of interruption.

Another point this brings to light is the fact that when companies try to capitalize on the social aspects of the internet they fail. Twitter is here because big companies locked us into this world of friends only and clique based chatting, which is fine, but the world is much bigger and way more interesting - who wants to always be in a safety zone? Life is about risks and anytime you meet someone new you are taking a risk, but Twitter actually lessens the risk because it gives you some sense of who you're talking with as well as being public making it even less risky. It's kind of like a virtual party where you have micro conversations in a public setting where you almost always meet a new friend by the end of the night...

This brings me to my last thought and what would be really cool. Imagine anywhere you carry your GPS device you are not just marked at a place, but actually move around in a 3-D chat world! This is what I believe is next, IMVU meets SpotMe.