I use Twitter and get the following questions a lot:

1. Please explain me what is so interesting about it? I signed up, but don’t get it.
2. Who has time for that!?

When explaining Twitter I often give the example of  being in a pub and talking to my friends. Sometimes I talk about work, sometimes about my health of that of my parents, sometimes about my kids, but mostly about women and other fun stuff. And then I say; but in a pub there often is loud music and you can talk with two to three people at the same time, plus you don’t know what the other people in the pub are talking about.
- With Twitter you can follow conversations of people you find interesting and have a low barrier of entry to mingle in the conversation.

- With Twitter you can easily skip a, for you, uninteresting conversation without having to say: “I have to go to the toilet, be right back!”

- With Twitter you can participate in many conversations at the same time.

So to sum it up: For me Twitter is being in a very big world wide bar, with only people you like.
And then I came across this video yesterday of @perrybelcher, he compares a lot of social networking to a party… Close enough to my pub

What I also find good about his explanation is the way he talks about the latent sales implications of sharing your knowledge and interests. I call this the indirect sales opportunities and will post my thougths about it in the near future.

follow me @mathys