Summary of TIME’s cover story about Twitter
The cover story of this week’s edition of the TIME magazine is about Twitter and all the excitement around it. If you have an interest in how Twitter is affecting the way we live then the story is definitely worth reading. This is my summary of the article.
There is no shortage of blog posts out there analysing Twitter and all the remarkable phenomena that have appeared and evolved as a result if it. What’s interesting about this article is the larger perspective it puts it all in. The impact of Twitter goes far beyond what’s immediately obvious and a string of new and exciting concepts will have far-reaching effects in years to come.
One of the most fascinating aspects of Twitter is the evolution it’s been through. It’s now being widely used in ways the founders most certainly had never dreamt of. Twitter has been redesigned and reinvented by its users many times over already. Hashtags and @-replies are both concepts that were spontaneously invented and developed by the user base. Similarly, there are literally thousands of applications (now more than 11,000 apparently) out there developed on the Twitter platform by people not affiliated with the Twitter company. And indeed the vast majority of users interact with the service through third-party software rather than using the website itself on Twitter.com.
This whole idea of end-user innovation is increasingly the most important success factor in new and existing ventures. If you can create a platform that effectively facilitates end-user innovation your product will evolve faster and be more closely aligned with customer needs than what can ever be achieved with a more traditional R&D approach.
Twitter facilitates quite a unique form of communication which is very democratic. There is no central authority and it’s open to everyone. It’s real time and about real events. For example, knowledge sharing at conferences and other industry events are now often catalysed by real-time conversations on Twitter which aren’t confined to delegates attending the events. The concept of hashtags plays a key role in this.
Twitter is also becoming a valuable tool for many when seeking information. The combination of social networking, real-time searching and link-sharing provides an interesting alternative to Google when it comes to finding information. It’s more current and provides interesting comments from your extended social network.
It is also noteworthy that Twitter is just the underlying technology platform. The fascinating development to follow is the characteristics of the type of communication it facilitates. The real-time conversation and knowledge sharing will be entrenched in many platforms to come. Although, it’s hard to imagine right now, it’s entirely possible that Twitter might not exist or have morphed into something completely different in three or four years. However, the key elements of the platform including the follower structure, link-sharing and real-time searching are here to stay and the three major information channels of news, searching and advertising will evolve around these key elements.
Another point mentioned in the article is that Twitter does not make a very good first impression. The majority of new registered users never do much after signing up. It’s definitely one of those things that needs to be experienced before the value is understood. If you’re keen to experience the Twittersphere I have a brief article on how you get started with Twitter.
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