Tech's making all of us twits

04-11-2009

by Ralph Averbuch

It seems we have a lot to say about the very simple Twitter.

Is it this blogger or is there something just a little ironic about the enthusiasm the masses are showing for Twitter? Whilst there seems to be a real drive towards a connected society where we're literally never offline, the latest killer application is merely a tool for broadcasting your thoughts, feelings or links to the world in 140 characters or less. This, we're told, is the pinnacle of social networking (so far). Well that may be. Yet, if we dissect this for a moment, perhaps Twitter's success is due to a combination of scale -- it's used by a lot of people, which makes it a rich information resource -- and ubiquity, since you can tweet your thoughts and pick up tweets just about anywhere, on any device. And the irony? Well isn't there something just a little amusing about people spending hefty sums of cash to buy smartphones, laptops and netbooks, just to send what's essentially a text message in wolf's clothing? That's not to suggest that Twitter is simply flavour of the moment. Twitter has facilitated and nurtured a whole new way for people to communicate... and it's very effective. But it's this facilitation of communication that really counts. All Twitter's done is do it faster and more immediately than anything that's come before. No wonder that Bing, Google and now Yahoo want to include this rich seam of real-time, people-generated information into their search results.

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