I was talking to a very dear friend from mine from back home (Northwest Florida), and she asked me to explain Twitter. My friend is not very technical, so I couldn’t give my usual explanation.

I told her the basics: you get an account, you send out little messages, and anyone who is on twitter or who has access to the twitter website can your messages, you can follow people to filter messages, or use other tools to filter. I told her a little bit about how I use Twitter at work and how I use it to connect to educational professionals from all over the world.

She told me – its like eating sunflower seeds! You have to get through all the shells to get to the seeds.

I told her that once you figure out how to sort things out, its not so bad. And she said, well maybe its more like shucking oysters. Some people are very skilled at it, and can shuck gallons and gallons of oysters in a few hours.

That is a better analogy I think, because I can’t shuck an oyster to save my life. But when I used to work in the restaurants back home, you knew when you had the “good” shuckers working, you never had to wait for oysters! They even showed me what to do, but it didn’t help.

Susan told me that’s how Twitter sounds to her. It sounds like something she should be able to do, but the learning curve seems so steep she’s not sure she’s willing to put in the time to figure it out.

Susan is so good at explaining things!