Imagine standing in the middle of a massive, rockin' party and chatting with a couple of friends. You still hear snippets of completely different conversations occurring all around you while staying focused and replying to what your companions are saying. You hear something interesting, you give a shout-out to the speaker, receive a reply, and more information (commonly known as links in Twitterdom). Twitter has increased collaborative interaction inside the 'sphere because of the ability to carry on many conversations, jump into other threads of thought, and receive links from people you follow and people they follow which is the equivalent of 21st century 'word of mouth'.
According to a 2009, Time Magazine article, "How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live", author Steven Johnson states, " In short, the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it's doing to us. It's what we're doing to it." Twitter opened up a new and faster social communication platform with its 140 character lifebytes, but the big surprise was how the users of Twitter morphed it into a veritable smorgasbord of conversations and information which has become very addictive for many users.
The aspect of the Twitter phenomenon that Steve Johnson is referring to is the fact that most of Twitter's applications are produced by third parties that have no affiliation with Twitter, but wanted to be able to increase the interconnectivity that is Twitter. This is evidenced by being able to embed videos and images in streams, drop links to longer articles and Flickr accounts. The ease of 'retweeting' information is also a major step up from other social platforms. There are numerous plugins being written including those that attach to browsers, so that a user can watch their Twitter home page scroll along from any page that they are currently on. The search feature and hashtags allow a Twitter user to follow a trending topic without adding any new followers if they do not wish to.
Twitter users are taking the medium to a level that the founders, Evan Williams and Biz Stone probably did not envision, but this particular social platform will most likely endure because of the many minds molding it on a daily basis to be the best possible tool for speedy access to human communication and information.
Source: Shroeder, S. (2008). 8 Awesome Firefox Plugins For Twitter.
Source: Johnson, S. (2009). How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live.
4 comments:
Someone once said -- "It's the apps stupid". I don't remember who said that, maybe I did once to a family member.
Anyway, you touched on a important point on how Twitter may have become something it wasn't intended for. This is often the case for most applications. You give the users just enough freedom and expose the application with a simple API -- and lo-and-behold, something fresh and exciting emerges.
However, is Twitter really any different at it's core than say the Facebook home feed, a MySpace activity stream or an active message board ? I think not, but it's all about presentation -- and the makers of twitter have done an excellent job of adhering to KISS (keep it simple stupid).
They were the first to make a simple app centered around micro blogging, expose it all with a trivial API. At least, I think this is all it took. It could have been all due to Ashton Kutcher and Opera jumping on board ;)
Great article. The sentence "a piece of technology that keeps up with the pace that humans have set for themselves" hits the nail on the head for me concerning twitter. I like the idea of being able to hear just the things I want to. NFL news, political news, and a select few commentators. Great write-up, thank you.
Michael P.
Twitter is a fascinating tool. And, as you shared, Twitter is being shaped by how we use it. I really enjoy tweets from conferences I couldn't attend and getting my own real time feed from friends and other trusted sources.
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