Explaining Twitter to Chamillionaire at Techcrunch August Capital 2008
If you don’t know who Chamillionaire is read this.
Simply, he’s the guy who sings/raps the popular song “Ridin‘” aka Ridin Dirty.
Last night at the Techcrunch August Capital 2008 party I, along with my buddy Matt Van Horn from Digg, had the opportunity to say a quick hi to Chamillionaire.
Chamillionaire was a really nice guy who truly seemed interested in what the Web 2.0 space has to offer. Rather than having his PR team deal with social media, Chamillionaire felt as if it would be best if he truly learned the game. Displaying his knowledge early, he mentioned to Matt that he had seen the little digg buttons all over the place.
One way or another the conversation shifted to Twitter. Chamillionaire pleaded to us that he didn’t understand why Twitter was so popular. His main problem was the fact that he felt that 140 characters wasn’t enough. He wondered why people wouldn’t want to read more.
I explained to him that Twitter was the perfect balance between information / marketing / and networking/communication. 140 characters is the perfect amount to consume since most people don’t have the time to go beyond that. The analogy that hit home the best was the idea that rather than reading the whole book, it’s simple easier to read the spark notes. Chamillionaire responded with, “Spark notes for your life - that makes sense.” I went on to mention how Twitter keeps you connected to the people you want to stay connected with. I used the example of the party that night, and mentioned how Twitter helped me find the people I wanted to find when I wanted to find them.
After the 5 to 10 minute conversation ended Chamillionaire let me know that I was the first person to explain Twitter to him in a manner that made sense to him. He finally saw the value of using Twitter and understood why people actually use it.
Cool little moment for both me and Twitter. If you know any guys at Twitter be sure to pass it on to them, they might get a kick out of it 
Also big thanks again to the Techcrunch team and August capital for the great party. Many thanks to Jessica Mah for the ride, and Mazy from Ustream for the ticket.
