Is Twitter Changing Real Life Social Interactions?

twitter Last week I had the pleasure of flying out to Portland for Ignite Portland 3. I had a fabulous time and met some really awesomesauce people including one of my biggest idols Marshall Kirkpatrick, fellow Grand Effect Network member and now team writer for ReadWriteWeb, Frederic of The Last Podcast, and a host of other people that I’ll mention in another post that’s all about the trip to Portland. What I’m going to talk about in this post is what occurred at the after party hosted by Strands at Imbibe.
     

Introductions

community At the Imbibe after party I got to talk to a ton of people that I’d only briefly met at IP3. I was twittering and Brightkiting my every step to be honest. I even got stopped and complimented by Gabriel Aldamiz-echevarria, VP of Communications for Strands. After my conversation with Gabe, I headed over to the table that Marshall, Frederic, and a host of others were gathered. I never made it to the table because I ran into Gaia Brown (brilliant woman!) who introduced me to Jake Kuramoto. Gaia started a conversation with someone else and while Jake and I were talking, Marshall came up and introduced me to Craig Schwartz of Toonlet. Do you see where I’m going with this? No? Keep reading then.
    

A Twitter Reaction

chat It came to a point where I was basically conversation hopping. This was cool because I got to meet a ton of new people and no one had any hard feelings about other people joining the conversation or changing the topic. However, at one point when I stopped talking and sat down, I thought, “Damn, this is Twitter IRL!”.

In turn, this made me wonder if people were taking on the social habits that you would normally exude on Twitter. Twitter is all about conversation hopping in order to make connections with a lot of people in a relatively short span of time. I’d never conversation hopped in such a manner before like I did at Imbibe, except on Twitter. I can’t stress enough how very Twitter-ish the entire thing felt except the conversations were longer but generally interrupted at any given time (Twitter anyone?). Most, if not all of these people are Twitter users. So there has to be at least some kind of connection there, right?
   

What Effects Does Twitter Have On You?

question Is it possible that everyone at the Imbibe party was under some sort of Twitter spell or is this a natural Portland get-together reaction? Does Twitter have an effect on the way you converse at parties?

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
  • I use twitter and it help me to communication with my friends
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    It affected my iPhone battery life! Hehe... i am tweeting almost every 30 mins with my iPhone.
  • It's kind of addictive. People are now asking for Twitter IDs rather than phone numbers.
  • It would be a matter of time when parents need to find their kids via Twitter.
  • I must agree with it but asking for Twitter IDs are a little far fetch. Good joke though. ;-)
  • Oops. Duplicate comment. I'll use this one to say that I first heard of you through Twitter, when you said you were flying in for Ignite Portland 3. And now I "know" you. So there's your proof! :-)
  • You asked if this happens all the time in Portland, and the answer is yes, yes it does. :-)
  • Hey - it wasn't until after Marshall introduced me to you, in the lobby of the Bagdad, that it dawned on me that I'd read your tweets a couple of times. I got so involved in conversation with Marshall's partner, that I never got to talk to you.

    Though I've lived in PDX most of my life, this is the way I've always experienced "parties." In fact, the quote from my in The Oregonian mentions how Twitter is like walking through the convention hall at a large conference. But I like your term - "conversation hopping." That works.

    I'm glad you enjoyed your visit in Portland - we hope to see you here again sometime!

    PS: After reading this post (recommended by @turoczy), I kept reading more and more. You're a good writer!
  • Thanks for the compliment Gary.

    I've honestly never experienced this at "parties" or maybe I'm comparing things to clubs that I've been to. Even then we chit chat at clubs or parties at clubs, but I've never experienced things the way I did in Portland. It was pretty amazing though. :)
  • I couldn’t agree more with you, and think that this is partly due to the relatively small size of Portland’s tech community.

    When you have a lot of the same people showing up to the same events—averaging about once every week or two—connections are reinforced and new ones are quickly made.
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