[Web4lib] The value of Twitter as back channel

Tue Aug 10 19:46:32 EDT 2010

Thank you Norma Jean!

     Twitter is a specific service.  The service it provides can be adapted
to various purposes, but the concept of "tweets" or 'twittering" has
seemingly acquired a prominence of its own.  It is hard to defend the idea
that the specific service is in any sense revolutionary.  What is certainly
true is that it provides a convenient mechanism for broadcasting and
following which enables shallow social networking to a degree that has been
quite remarkable.  In my not so humble opinion, the "remarkableness" ends
there.  If it had not been or ceases to be free we will see more clearly
what it is really worth to the many people who use it.

    The ubiquity of cell phones with SMS is what makes this whole phenomenon
feasible.  The simplicity is a reflection of the fact that it really really
is trivially simple.  The moment you hear defenses or attacks on it you know
you have discovered what was feared by many -- religious fervor is a
universal human susceptibility.  It is what it is -- easier and cheaper
than, say, playing golf, but viewed dispassionately,like golf it is for many
an excuse to feel like you are doing something special.  Of course,
important business and political deals are completed on the golf course, but
the game itself is, despite the admirable skill and dedication it may
demand, in the end "conceptually" trivial.  That does not mean it is without
its uses -- it simply means that trying to fathom it as some profound idea
with deeper implications is probably a waste of time.  (Incidentally, for
all their environmental impact, golf course are often beautiful backdrops
that allow participants an aesthetic escape.  I am not trying to say its
meritless.  Simply that, like twitter, golf is not intrinsically profound.
 Mastering it, of course, may involve some things that ARE profound --
something I doubt is true for twitter.)

    That having been said, what is more productive is to study how cleverly
Twitter can be deployed in specific situations to solve a real communication
problem -- or enhance the benefits of a social situation.  This thread was a
perfectly respectable example of that.  Notice that these examples generally
do not require much actual study.  I am glad it worked and find my own
imagination somewhat stimulated by how well it helped in the conference
situation.  Can we go on to the next case now?  Or is one such example a
pretty good paradigm for most of the others?  (I don't know the answer to
that last question, but it merits discussion.)  (Aside: the use of twitter
by Iranian dissidents was notable and important.  Whether, per se, it had
profound consequences is not so clear, but it did demonstrate something
worth studying more carefully.  I don't mean to argue that all uses of
twitter are equally easy to pass off as without special significance -- just
that most probably lack distinction.)

    But again, twittering (so-called, for now) remains a super simple idea.
 It will be duplicated and enhanced by other services.  Somebody will
eventually figure out if the current service can generate revenue to sustain
itself.  Other business models will arise.  Maybe cell carriers will take it
over in some way.  There will (hopefully!) be competition.  But for goodness
sake, its primarily a popular discovery of another way to use cell phones
(and other mobile platforms).  If or when "twitter" the service fails to
figure out how to generate enough revenue to sustain itself, there will be a
crisis for the existing service, but I just have to believe that some new
player with a more reasoned business model will quickly step in.

    About what decade was it when most people realized that teenagers had
developed a methodology of virtual meeting using the telephone?  Was it
heralded then as a revolution in social networking?  Nah... it was
completely predictable application of a technology that was otherwise
trivial to use at the time. Nobody had any idea that talking on the
telephone could or should be recognized as "virtual meeting."   Did it cause
big changes in adolescent social structures?  Actually, maybe it did -- I
don't know.  I do know that back then there were not nearly enough people
armed with jargon and psuedo-analytical depictions of common-place phenomena
to tempt anyone to hold up the result as symbolizing anything profound.  My
personal concern is that in the modern age we struggle to distinguish the
truly profound from the wildly popular or novel given that the latter can be
wrapped in so much respectable-sounding technical jargon.  Its likely that
twitter 'the service" will become a poster child for this problem.

P.S.  Does anyone here suspect that, in contrast to twitter, Wikipedia
involves some ideas that indeed are profound?   Now, if being a Wikipedia
editor was easy enough that just about anybody would do it for fun, it would
*really* be an the endless topic embraced by celebrities and ordinary people
alike! --- but it isn't.

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 3:29 PM, Norma Jean Hewlett <hewlett at usfca.edu>wrote:

> Twitter is just another way to communicate.
>
> This includes communicating before, during and after conferences.
>
> There are definite pros and cons about using it to communicate on
> presentations while they are going on.
>
> Some people hate it and others love it. Others don't much care.
>
> You could say the same about any other communication medium, including
> email
> or handwritten letters.
>
> If you haven't tried it yourself, you really have no idea what it's like.
>
> End of sermon/summary.
>
> Jean Hewlett
> Librarian, Santa Rosa Campus
> University of San Francisco
> aka Riven Homewood
>
> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 7:53 AM, John Fereira <jaf30 at cornell.edu> wrote:
>
> > I have often wondered if twitter would gain a lot more acceptance if it
> > wasn't called twitter.
> >
> >
> >
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-- 
Steven E. Patamia, Ph.D., J.D.
Personal Cell: (352) 219-6592