> In other words, on Twitter, people say things that they think of as ephemeral and chatty. Their utterances are then treated as unequivocal political statements by people outside the conversation.
This seems to point to the main problem of Twitter: it's not clear who your audience is. Are you talking to your friends? To your family? To people with similar interests? To people you're trying to convince to agree with you on some position? Who? It's too... vague a medium to be useful for most kinds of communication.
You are completely right. In a sense, it is also what draws people to Twitter. There is a low barrier to entry if you want to make an account to just broadcast to your family, fans (if you are celebrity), advertise for companies, collect people for activism (whether political, economic, or social media activism), etc.
Then again, there are probably better mediums for this. If you want to talk to your friends, why not use Facebook? If you want to advertise your art, why not go on tumblr or Soundcloud? Nowadays, the only Twitter accounts that seem to get much traffic are celebrities and companies (I am thinking particularly Twitch as I don't go on twitter much) advertising.
About the only thing I have used Twitter for is writing topical one-liners related to the Comedy Central television show @Midnight's "Hash Tag Wars" segment.
It makes me think I'm funnier than I actually am. But I also have to sift through a lot of bad and mediocre humor in order to get a good laugh from all the amateur comedians that participate.
There may be future conflicts between the people using Twitter for casual socialization and jokey-jokes and those using it as a serious platform for news distribution, public relations, political activism, or announcements.
There's just no good way to keep your vaguely prejudiced or non-PC attempts at humor away from the social justice warriors that will pick it up, sharpen it to a razor edge, and cut your throat with it. If you're at an open-mic night, you just get booed. If you're on Twitter, you might get fired from your day job, too. But there's an upside. If you Tweet one of your baby steps on the long road to beating cancer to your 6 followers before going to bed, you might wake up the next morning to a Harpo Studios production assistant ringing your doorbell.
No one is really listening to you on Twitter, but anyone could be.
Richelieu's maxim: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
Twitter's corollary: "If you give me 140 characters from the most unremarkable of feeds, I will find in them an excuse to dogpile upon the author."
I've recently heard Twitter described in a way I believe is accurate.
It's a broadcast platform; most people use it broadcast OUT, but very few people use it to consume. Sure, there is some conversation, but primarily, people read their @ replies/notifications. I often will go several hours or a whole day without checking Twitter; the reality is that there are tons of conversations I missed that just disappear.
But if someone hits me with an @ message, I will see it.
This seems to point to the main problem of Twitter: it's not clear who your audience is. Are you talking to your friends? To your family? To people with similar interests? To people you're trying to convince to agree with you on some position? Who? It's too... vague a medium to be useful for most kinds of communication.