Twitter is: a sushi train where we are both customer and chef
Years after becoming a Twitter user, I find I’m still explaining it to people, and my explanation continues to evolve. Often, technology is best explained through analogy, by relating the technology to something non-technical your audience knows from the ‘real’ world. The challenge is finding an analogy that will be familiar enough to make sense to your audience, while at the same time, informing them about all the many benefits your new technology offers.
My previous Twitter analogy was a dinner party:
“Twitter is like a big dinner party with a group of interesting friends who are having several conversations on different topics at the same time. You’re able to dip in and out of conversations around the table. Sometimes you contribute, sometimes you just listen, and sometimes you pick up on something interesting from one conversation and carry it across to another conversation to share it there. You don’t need to be paying attention to everything all the time — if you need to go to the bathroom you can get an update when you return or just relax and enjoy how the conversations have evolved since you left.”
The best thing about that analogy is that everybody’s been to a dinner party like that before. But it doesn’t always work — dinner parties can be chaotic and stressful for some people, and Twitter is never really chaotic and stressful (if it is, you’re doing it wrong!) I’ve had a few friends grimace when I use this analogy, and I would rather turn people on to Twitter, not off Twitter altogether.
Kevin Marks works on interweb stuff for BT, worked on OpenSocial at Google and was a lead engineer at Technorati. After reading Kevin’s blog post on the idea of a ‘flow-past web‘, or more specifically, the comments on that post, I really like the idea of a ’sushi boat’ or ’sushi train.’
Twitter is like a sushi train restaurant because a sushi train has a wide variety of bite-sized morsels — and Twitter offers a variety of bite-sized ideas/complains/jokes/whatever. Like a sushi train, you can select the morsels you like and maybe share some of it with your companions to either side. And like a sushi train, things don’t disappear — they go around and around, and if one serve of salmon sashimi is taken, there’ll be another one around in a minute.
The main problem with my new analogy is that the morsels on a sushi train are only added by the chef(s), whereas on Twitter, the morsels are contributed by you and your fellow diners. Uh-oh.
So now I would love your feedback: can you visualise a sushi train restaurant without a chef, where you and the other diners prepare and present tasty sushi of your own? Where the whole point of the restaurant is to participate in both making and consuming interesting sushi?
Please let me know if you do. Because if not, I need another analogy…
Kevin Marks talking about the flow-past web and more at Web 2.0 Expo recently.
(Sushi train pic: http://www.flickr.com/photos/loozrboy/ / CC BY-SA 2.0)
8 Responses to “Twitter is: a sushi train where we are both customer and chef”
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New blog post: Twitter is: a sushi train where we are both customer and chef http://bit.ly/52bOHX
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Kevin’s talk is interesting too: RT @bigyahu: Twitter is: a sushi train where we are both customer and chef http://bit.ly/52bOHX
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Please RT: Twitter is: a sushi train where we are both customer and chef …: Years after becoming a .. http://bit.ly/5j6DJH
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Twitter is a sushi train – now that’s a good metaphor – @bigyahu http://bit.ly/7W0o8m
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Did you go to the web 2.0 expo?
Sadly, no. Why? Were people expecting me?
Nope – just is a cool application and wanted to see some of your thoughts I’m currently thinking of making something similar but marketed to going green.
Sure, send me some details (contact form: http://alanjones.wufoo.com/forms/m7×4a3/) I’d be happy to take a look and let you know what I think.