Twitter's Community.

Above: A screenshot taken from Twitter's "Discover" page, which also tells people to "express yourself" and "share openly."

I've been on Twitter for probably about five years now, and when I first started using it, I think I was just as confused as everyone else about what it's supposed to do. According to their "About" page, their mission is "to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers." To me, that seems to be a pretty vague mission statement, considering what Twitter actually is: it's a platform that essentially lets you post 140 character quips and ideas to however many followers you can acquire, while at the same time reading the quips and ideas of the people you follow. The thing about Twitter, though, is that it serves multiple purposes by being very simple: unlike Facebook, which although complex is essentially a social site to be used amongst you and your friends, Twitter allows you to follow anybody (as long as they're not set to private). This can include your family, your friends, celebrities, politicians, or even people who you randomly stumble upon.

I make a point to use my Twitter mostly for comedic purposes and self promotion, which differs from other people. I tend to not follow friends, even though they follow me, because I don't really care about tweets like "Just did my homework" or "Tired :(" - that's kind of what Facebook is for. I don't need two sites to hear about that, so I use Twitter to post my own funny comments and read the tweets of comedians or people I deem funny. I follow a couple news sites as well, but I mostly use it for this purpose.

Relating this to Bellah, it's interesting because I'm essentially creating a community here, but not necessarily one I'm interacting with. Unlike Facebook, the people I follow on Twitter aren't friends of mine, and I don't really communicate with them other than reading their tweets. The people who follow me are at times friends, but also strangers who have stumbled upon my tweets - maybe because they've been retweeted by someone else, or because someone posted a tweet saying to follow me. There are a few friends who I connect with on Twitter, but for me it doesn't really serve as a real community - I would call it more of an Invisible Lifestyle Enclave. I am technically part of a community, but since I'm not really interacting with them, I don't think it necessarily counts as a community. Then again, if we're going based on what Twitter's mission statement is, they don't really say anything about community, only that they want you to be able to share whatever your thoughts and ideas are "without barriers." In a sort of individualistic way, that Bellah talks about, thus Twitter becomes a medium to share your ideas more than it is to hear the ideas of other people; even though Twitter ends up being used to both share and listen, that's not what the site claims itself to be for. It does, on other pages, tell you to "connect with people," however they say that these are "casual and spontaneous" and clearly this is not the main usage for the site. Connection seems to be important to Twitter, but not as much so as sharing your own ideas freely and openly.