Andrea Jarrell pointed out an interesting article recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education. It’s a list of ten people to follow on Twitter, but it also includes some interesting discussion of what Twitter is and how you might use it. It’s geared toward academics — people who often live and interact in pages rather than sentences.

The piece includes this sentence:

With Twitter, no update can be longer than 140 characters, which, to give you a sense of that limit, is the precise length of this sentence.

It’s meant to be an example of how tough it might be to live in a 140-character box. My immediate response: that sentence is too long.

Later in the article, the list of people to follow comes along, and each one gets a name, a link, a sample Twitter update, and then between one and three paragraphs of description.

Again, I thought: too long. Just give me the list.

At first I thought this negative reaction to the article might have something to do with being corrupted by all this immediate-communication technology. I’ve been altered and can’t manage a sustained argument anymore. Fast food only, please. But I don’t think that’s true. (I know it’s not true. I write pieces that include sustained arguments and nuance for a living.)

Instead, I think it’s because, when I happened on the article, I was in burst-mode and wanted to grab information in bite-size chunks. However, since the article is not aimed at someone like me, but at a different kind of audience, there are certain conventions it must follow. It’s got to be sensitive to the reader.

The author of the piece is a Twitter user and presumably has similar sensibilities to other Twitter users. That is, shrt is gd. But, in essentially writing a travel piece, telling digital foreigners about a new land, the author admirably adopted the conventions and norms of his audience.

Interesting: In conveying the utility of Twitter, you’ve got to step completely out of its bounds.

Or just start using it and see what happens.

P.S. Bet u want list. Here:

1. @PRsarahevans — Sarah Evans, dir pub rels @ Elgin Community College
2. @jayrosen_nyu — Jay Rosen, assoc journo prof  @ NYU
3. @hrheingold — Howard Rheingold, lecturer @ UCBerkeley
4. @amandafrench — Amanda French, digital-curriculum expert @ NYU
5. @academicdave — David Parry, asst prof emerging media & comms @ UT-Dallas
6. @dancohen — Dan Cohen, dir Ctr For History & New Media @ George Mason University
7. @paullev — Paul Levinson, prof of new media @ Fordham
8. @mcleod — Scott McLeod, assoc prof @ Iowa State
9. @mwesch — Michael L. Wesch, asst prof of cultural anthro @ Kansas State
10. @presidentgee — Gordon Gee, pres of Ohio State