Why I Love Twitter

News Type: Opinion — Seeded on Tue Dec 2, 2008 12:42 AM EST

Article Source: radar.oreilly.com

technology, twitter, face-book, tim-oreilly, ambient-intimacy

If you care what I think, you know that Twitter is just about the best way to learn what I'm paying attention to. I pass along tidbits of O'Reilly news, interesting reading from mailing lists and blogs I follow, and of course, tidbits from the twitterers I'm following. These are all the things I could never find time to put on my blog, but that I spray via email like a firehose at editors, conference planners, and researchers within O'Reilly. A lot of my job is, as we say, "redistributing the future" - following interesting people, and passing on what I learn to others. And twitter is an awesome tool for doing just that.
Like a lot of people, I tried out Twitter early on, but didn't stick to it. Most of the early twitter conversation was personal, and I didn't have time for it. I came back when I noticed that about 5000 people were following my non-existent updates, waiting for me to say something. With that many listeners, I thought I'd better oblige. (There are now close to 16,000.) I soon realized that Twitter has grown up to become a critical business tool, ideal for following the latest news, tracking the ideas and whereabouts of people who will shape the future of technology, and sharing my own thoughts and attention stream.
I thought I should outline here some of the specific things I find so compelling about Twitter, with suggestions about architectural features to be emulated by other internet services. (via rwaux)

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What's this?

Who's leading the conversation?

This visualization below allows you to see the impact that each user has on the current conversation. The top row contains the group of users who have had the most impact, the 2nd row the group of users who have had the 2nd most impact (et cetera). Users with similar impact are grouped together, and the average score of the group is shown to the left of the group. The author of the article is also shown on the left, in their corresponding group. Each user's score is based on the number of comments the user has made plus the number of votes their comments have received. The scores are calculated relative one another, so while their absolute value is not particularly important, their relative difference does indicate a larger difference in impact on the conversation.

1.5

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Redruby

Excerpt:

In many ways, Twitter is a re-incarnation of the old Unix philosophy of simple, cooperating tools. The essence of Twitter is its constraints, the things it doesn't do, and the way that its core services aren't bound to a particular interface.

It strikes me that many of the programs that become enduring platforms have these same characteristics. Few people use the old TCP/IP-based applications like telnet and ftp any more, but TCP/IP itself is ubiquitous. No one uses the mail program any more, but all of us still use email. No one uses Tim Berners-Lee's original web server and browser any more. Both were superseded by independent programs that used his core innovations: http and html.

What's different, of course, is that Twitter isn't just a protocol. It's also a database. And that's the old secret of Web 2.0, Data is the Intel Inside. That means that they can let go of controlling the interface. The more other people build on Twitter, the better their position becomes.

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1 vote

#1 - Tue Dec 2, 2008 12:43 AM EST

{"canLink":false,"threadId":"432270","isPrivate":false}

How Should Journalists Use Twitter?	Columbia Journalism Review	Tue Dec 2	0
Microblogs and the evolution of news events: Twitter and its role in reporting the terror in Mumbai	johnr1uk	Mon Dec 1	1
Mumbai: Twitter's Moment: Citizen journalism goes real time as Mumbai attacks unfold.	Forbes	Mon Dec 1	6
Facebook gave no warning regarding deactivation	TypePad.com	Mon Dec 1	0

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Why I Love Twitter

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