Inspired by sitting next to Jeremiah Owyang today and Kate’s recent series about how/why she uses Twitter, I thought I’d add my own explanation about my use of the service.

If you don’t know/care about Twitter, this may be boring. However, if you’re a friend of mine in real life, you should read it anyway.

Here’s the thing: I don’t use Twitter like most of my web colleagues. See, before Twitter was the service du jour, I used Dodgeball as a way to send broadcast texts to my friends about where I was. Part of the fun of Dodgeball was that sometimes I’d actually meet up with friends based on a dodge. It was awesome!

When Twitter came around and it became clear that Dodgeball was a dying platform, I started using Twitter the same way I’d used Dodgeball: all notifications (aka “tweets”) from my friends were sent to my Sidekick, and I would send an update when I was somewhere social, ie “I’m working from Remedy Teas — anyone want to meet for a tea/work date?”

Because of this, I kept my Twitter feed closed to the public. I looove random internet people, but I don’t need them to know where I am at.

Additionally, I was super selective about who I added as a friend, since my best case scenario was one of my Twitter buddies showing up where ever I was at, and honestly there’s only a small group of people who I’m always going to be happy to see. Do I want that a coworker from three jobs ago showing up at a cafe, wanting to chat? Not always.

I do have a few folks I’ve added as friends who I don’t get notifications from, but it’s very few.

Now, of course I’ve expanded to use Twitter for non-location posts as well … but I see it as somewhat of an inner sanctum. It’s mostly my very close, day-to-day real life local friends who are on Twitter with me, and we send a lot of tweets that would be meaningless and/or pointless for anyone else. I like that it’s a quiet, private place for me to text with my friends.

This keeps Twitter awesome and not irritating, ensuring that almost all the tweets on my phone are contextually and socially valuable to me.

But! This isn’t how most people use Twitter, and it’s certainly not how all my fellow web geeks use it.

Today at the conference, Jeremiah tweeted about a comment I made, and I wanted to respond — but he wouldn’t see my tweet unless I added him as a friend. Which I did … but I’ll probably remove him once the conference is over. I’m sort of jealous of the way that my fellow web 2.0 geeks use Twitter — basically as a chat room. But I don’t need another chat room, realistically. Instead, I want a texting service that helps me keep in close touch with my group of close friends via phone.

The biggest disappointment for me with Twitter are that not all my close friends are on it, and sometimes I feel like they’re missing out on the social dialog — like some of us are gossiping in a corner and they’re not in on it.

Andreas isn’t on Twitter, which means sometimes he’s not part of group social plans that get made. I desperately wish Cienna Madrid was on Twitter because she’s one of the funniest writers I know, and I’d love to get gems from her on my phone during the day.

I tried to get Tim, my dear friend who recently moved to New York, to join Twitter … I thought it might help him keep in touch with his Seattle friends. I suggested it to him twice, and he got fed up and told me in no unclear terms to STFU. His exact word (via text!) were: “I want you to stop talking to me about Twitter.” Oops! Ok. That’s what you get for being an evangelist.

I’ve invited all my close friends to use the service, but since it’s so flexible and can be used so many different ways, I don’t think they get it or want to get involved. Or maybe it’s just that I use it oddly? Certainly, there are no shortage of people I know using Twitter — but they’re all my web colleagues who use it differently than I do.

Summary: I like Twitter, but it would be much more powerful and useful to me if more of my close friends used it. I’m an early adopter and an influencer, but as my failed evangelism with Tim proves, there’s only so much I can do. This suggests that either I need to change how I use Twitter (and just acknowledge it as a blogging tool and completely eliminate sending tweets to my phone) or my friends need to get with the fucking program. ;)