It seems almost daily that we run across yet another friend who asks “So wait, what exactly is Twitter? What does it do? Why do I care?” Every time we get these questions, we have to pause, take a deep breath, and figure out why it is, exactly that this particular person would care.
It looks like Twitter itself has started to tackle this issue too, with its Clever Twitter Accounts blog on Posterous.
Louis Gray first noticed the site, which he writes is “full of ‘Clever’ examples aimed to make you say, ‘Now I get it!'”. The site is put together by Sean Garrett, Twitter’s head of communications, and Jenna Sampson, a communications associate at Twitter. They have been posting different uses of Twitter since the beginning of the month, pretty much culling various media across the Internet looking for Twitter mentions, from the looks of it.
The blog starts out with how people used Twitter in Chile to find missing persons and moves on to a San Francisco specific Twitter account meant to receive 311 complaints.
Gray notes how most things Twitter does explode immediately in popularity, pointing to how many followers both @twitterapi and @twitter have, but so far @cleveraccounts, the account associated with the blog, hasn’t given us all that much to chew on quite yet.
So, while getting a nod on the “Clever Twitter Accounts” blog isn’t likely to tip your follower scales the way the now-deceased Suggested User List would have, we’ll be keeping an eye on it to see if any new twists on Twitter use pop up.
Maybe, the thing is, we already “get it”. If you have a friend who doesn’t appear to get it yet, though, send ’em on over. Maybe they’ll be convinced by knowing they can follow the Japanese prime minister or navigate New York’s busy streets – all with the help of Twitter.
