My response to the Twitter debate on the NYT and New Yorker Blogs

Chain of events:

1. George Packer rants about Twitter on his New Yorker blog
2. Nick Bilton from the NYT Bits Blog rants about George Packer’s blog post
3. Both blog posts (especially Nick Bilton’s) generate a mass of comments illustrating the social media digital divide that still exists in our society.

My response, which I posted on both blogs:

“I can’t stop shaking my head reading some of the comments on here. Why? Because far too many people are still looking at Twitter at a micro-level (i.e. the actual application). Forget the name “Twitter” for a second. Let’s use the broader term “micro-blogging” , a channel to which Twitter (the app) belongs. Micro-blogging, or real-time status updating, is here to stay. Whether it’s Twitter updates, LinkedIn updates, Facebook updates, or “Application of tomorrow” updates, a critical mass of people (not everyone!) will now ALWAYS be sharing information in real-time regardless of what applications are out there. Google now indexes “updates” from any of these channels. Can you see the bigger picture here? Because these channels are aggregated they form THE WORLD’S LARGEST “REAL-TIME” DATABASE OF COLLECTIVE HUMAN THOUGHT. What most Twitter-dismissers don’t realize is that they can FILTER this database to make it relevant to their needs. Not only that, just like “there’s an app for everything” on the iPhone, Twitter has an open API ,which allows programmers to tap into that “real-time database” to create custom tools for very specific needs. There is no “right” way to use this channel (although plenty of obvious wrong ways). At the end of the day it depends what your objectives are personally and/or professionally. I think we have only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of the potential of real-time collective human thought. Don’t forget that internet penetration is increasing at a 10X faster rate in transitional and developing economies (holding the majority of the world’s population) than it is in the western world. Quick activity for newbies and skeptics:Go to search.twitter.com, click on advanced search, select Moscow as the location, select 50km radius, and Russian as the language. Hit enter. Press the “translate to English” button on the results page. Now take a deep breath and think about what you just did and how powerful of a tool this can potentially be in bringing humans around the globe closer together. And for Pete’s sake, stop going to Twitter.com, that’s where you go to sign up only. Download Tweetdeck (or equivalent) for yourself and set-up some filters, groups, categories and lists so that you don’t waste time doing it manually. Check-in for 5 minutes a day at first. You’ll determine your own use for it eventually. I can’t tell you what that is, you’ll need to discover it for yourself.”

I could obviously go on and on. At the end of the day thought, there will always be skeptics and people that simply have no interest in sharing, creating and discussing content, especially in a real-time setting. That’s perfectly fine! What I would love them to understand though is that even as in-actives, they will soon be tapping into this collective knowledge base regardless of Twitter (the tools will change) since the broader concept of a “real-time content/conversation channel” is here to stay.

What do you think?