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People struggle with why Twitter is special. It’s special because it
counters, better than any other technology, the timeless social obstacle of
“out of sight, out of mind”. Regardless of how much time you’d spend with a
given person if they lived nearby, relationships atrophy when distance comes
between you.

The longer someone you care about is gone, the more an invisible barrier
grows between you–one that makes it awkward to reinitiate contact. It’s as
if loved ones over time somehow change from tangible people into abstract
ideas that require effort to interact with. This sinister effect of distance
turns best friends into strangers, and technologies such as mobile phones
and video conferencing don’t help. They don’t help precisely because the
barrier is the initiation of contact, not the ability to communicate
once connected.

Twitter solves this problem in a way that no other technology has. Through a
stream of common, real-world updates about one’s life, Twitter reminds our
fickle, here-focused brains that those we care about are real, and prevents
them from disappearing into the world of the abstract. In short, Twitter’s
magic is that it’s able to keep close people close regardless of how far
they are from each other, which is a feat that no other technology has been
able to accomplish. ::