Life is tweet: How the Twitter family infiltrated our cultural world

The hottest microblogging service, Twitter, is changing the way TV, literature and media operate. Ajesh Patalay reports

Amid the flurry of marriage proposals likely to have taken place yesterday, one can be fairly certain that a novel handful happened on Twitter, the microblogging site that is fast colonising the world. Such proposals wouldn't be the first. That honour goes to Greg Rewis, a software manager from Phoenix, who popped the question to his fiancee (aka "stefsull") on Twitter last March: "@stefsull - OK for the rest of the twitter-universe [and this is a first, folks] - WILL YOU MARRY ME?" To which she giddily replied: "OMG - Ummmmm ... I guess in front of the whole twitter-verse I'll say - I'd be happy to spend the rest of my geek life with you."

It was early proof that Twitter, like true love, knows no bounds.

For those unacquainted (or "twirgins"), Twitter is a social networking service that combines elements of blogging and texting by allowing its users to send updates to their friends (or "followers") via the web or mobile phone in messages (or "tweets") of up to 140 characters each. Unlike Facebook, anyone on Twitter can follow your updates. The service, created in 2006 by San Francisco-based whizz kids Jack Dorsey, 31, and Biz Stone, 34, now relays up to 3 million tweets a day and is one of the fastest growing websites in the UK.

Despite the site's question of intent - "What are you doing?" - users rarely restrict themselves to status reports ("Am going for run" or "Watching Loose Women."), twittering instead on a number of subjects. At any given time, you can expect alerts, observations, questions, wisecracks and links to other sites from the constellation of people you are following. In its uneven variety, it starts to resemble real conversation, albeit in 140 character gobbets.

Granted, Twitter can look like blogging taken to its banal extreme. "Pointless email on steroids," is how author Tim Ferriss (The 4-Hour Work Week) described it. But, says co-founder Stone: "Twitter allows a kind of social alchemy."

Not only is there a cumulative power in posting regular updates, even on the most mundane topics, but in broader terms Twitter becomes less about what we are doing, as the site's strap-line would have it, and more about what we are thinking and what we are talking about. It is, as one analyst rightly coined it, "the water cooler of the 21st century".

It is also changing the shape of popular culture. Twitter lets us interact with each other and our politicians, business leaders, writers, producers and even our fictional heroes (in tweets dreamt up by fans). Twitter is the new cultural forum. Even the starriest celebrities, such as Britney Spears and Demi Moore, have embraced it. For good reason. It's an ideal format for chatting to (if not always with) fans.

As Stephen Fry, owner of the second most popular profile on Twitter (more than 160,000 followers), imparted to his fans: "I love to see your tweets: I love your wit, your kindness, your observation, your occasional mean streaks of bitchiness, remorseless logic and your long memories that pounce on my all too frequent inconsistencies and rashly made promises ... I am delighted to have you as a follower. Let's enjoy ourselves and to hell with those who don't get it."

Ajesh Patalay

The Observer, Sunday 15 February 2009