(Originally posted on the Big in Japan blog)

For a while, I’ve struggled to find an explanation for the reason I was using Twitter, even in the very minor way I was. It seems like everyone that I talked to about it said: "I don’t know what the point is", yet they were using it somewhat regularly.

I never got excited about the "what are you doing right now" model of posting (or reading for that matter). I don’t care where people are eating breakfast or what they’re having. But I do care about what they’re thinking right now. Or perhaps more specifically, I care what people I know are thinking right now. Some random guy from India? Unknown girl from Buffalo? No context, no interest.

But in the last couple of weeks, my wife and a group of our friends all signed up at once. Nearly overnight there was a group of people who I was very interested in having tell me what’s going on in their lives and what they think about it. I’m now following Twitter daily, if not hourly.

It’s more and more clear to me that social projects tend to fall into two areas:

1. Where my friends are - tools that help support existing social structures
2. Where I want to meet friends - tools that help make and support introductions to new people

This may seem a bit obvious or simplistic, but imagine how much better most social tools would be if they chose between these two to begin with. Too many tools try to serve both purposes as a first priority and simply get confusing.

(In related discussion, check out Jeremiah Owyang’s Jennifer Jones’ interview with the Twitter CEO)