> Real-world friends are the basis for your FBK graph, work colleagues are the basis for Linkedin. But Twitter? What's the community?
Twitter communities are formed by people with similar interests or opinions. This was THE promise of the internet at some point in the past - communication with people all over the world. Why is it beneficial to limit our communities to geographic or otherwise circumstantial boundaries which we often have little control over?
I'll point out that before the whole Web 2.0 and "social networking" thing happened, we had... forums. Which were actually communities. You would actually recognise names, grow a connection with people, probably wind up messaging them through PM systems and maybe getting their Messenger handles.
Now, to replace forums, we have... Reddit and Hacker News. Where even though you might recognise nicknames once in a while, you're unlikely to PM them, and in the case of HN that's actively impossible. And so people desire some system which gives them some sense of community, which Twitter (along with Tumblr, and a couple of other sites) gives them.
Twitter communities are formed by people with similar interests or opinions. This was THE promise of the internet at some point in the past - communication with people all over the world. Why is it beneficial to limit our communities to geographic or otherwise circumstantial boundaries which we often have little control over?