It’s not, and has never been a social network. It’s been a way to follow what’s going on without the noise and pain of a social network like facebook.

Shawn – Good point on social interaction not being balanced. There is probably a set of sociological profiles of communicator types at a party that could be applied. What Twitter sometimes limits is the opportunity to step across those boundaries.

If you attend any social function (IRL) you will notice that there are those who basically carry the conversation, and others who simply absorb what is going on around them. You’ll see a few sitting by the bar watching the game with no sound on the television who will occasionally grunt and groan at a bad call by the ref or high five the guy next to them when his/her team scores while others are engaged in the solve-the-worlds-problems debates.

My personal feeling about facebook and linked in is that the interactions go in two main camps: 1) meaningless comments that nobody really cares about, or 2) cleansed pontifications about the meaning of life. I find twitter to be somewhere closer to ‘real’ interaction, the way that people interact when they pass in the hall or stand next to each other in a line up.

Many people who use twitter have very overlapping ‘friend’ groups, but thanks to humans all being different, the patterns of ‘real’ people will blow the ideal friend/follower overlap out of the water.

Really helps understanding the ups & downs of Twitter.
Twitter is a channal while FB is medium.

Still I love Twitter & i don’t use FB