Earthblog

Among the many new and emerging digital communications platforms, Twitter has gained a foothold with a speed that has defied even the most sweeping expectations. Falling under the category of social media, Twitter launched in March 2006 by its developer, Jack Dorsey, a social network wunderkind, who, by age 14, was writing open source code. Twitter’s own “About Us” pages make it clear the company is focused on collaboration and describes itself as “An aggressively open company,” that encourages participation and relies on third-party developers to drive the platform forward.  

Twitter has seen staggering growth year-over-year since its 2006 launch. According to Mashable: The Social Media Guide, subscriptions grew by 752 percent in 2008 and 1382 percent to March 2009, a nearly 55 percent increase. If that statistic holds true for this year, Twitter subscriptions will be tracking to an over 2000 percent increase in users.

Being so new and largely misunderstood still, Twitter’s power is only just becoming clear. Non-users are often confused by what Twitter is and what it has to offer. Not surprisingly, non-users often think tweets about who is having what for lunch are a waste of time. But that type of meatless information quickly disappears as the ‘Tweeters’ who author it either join in the discussion or abandon the platform. This applies to those who see Twitter as a means of direct sales, who find themselves ignored, at best, or, more likely, blocked for spamming the community. One either becomes a micro-expert on a subject and attracts other Tweeters that way, or one disappears. In that respect, Twitter is very much, survival of the fittest.

Photo credit: Julie Vincent Photography 2010 Angela MacIsaac tweets from the YYC4Haiti as it progresses during the evening.

Twitter is definitely a social platform; there is endless conversation about any imaginable subject. The great majority of users understand Twitter as a collaborative platform for connecting to experts, either in a user’s own field or in other fields a user may need information about. One need only search a term preceded by a ‘hash tag’ or ‘#’ to find active conversations on nearly any subject, event, place or person. Many organizations, #YYC4Haiti included, establish specific hash-tags to make it easy for any user to find and participate in specific conversations.

David Nightengale, also known as @chromasia on Twitter, is one of Britain’s premiere photographers and owner of the weblog Chromasia. Nightengale makes extensive use of Twitter to inform the general public and his followers not only of his books and classes but, like many celebrity Tweeters, of events in his personal life – including the birth of his ninth child. Where Facebook provides one-way only fan sites, where fans have little expectation of participation by their celeb of choice, Twitterers, famous or not, engage in active two-way conversations with anyone they follow or whose tweets come across their feed.

When a significant tweet is picked up, the speed at which it travels, is re-tweeted and spread around the ‘Twittersphere’ can be mind-boggling, the elections in Iran being case in point:  there was global outrage at the process and legality of those elections and international conversation, discussion and rebellion on line. The Twittersphere exploded with users either turning their profile photos green or simply placing a green box as their avatar.

That said, even significant conversations and events can have short shelf-lives in terms of general interest. Not three weeks after the Iran elections, that conversation was largely exhausted. But despite the conversation having waned, the intense, world-wide discussion and awareness left behind a previously-unimaginable global awareness, not only for those of us far from the actual events, but also for those directly involved, particularly the politicians who, too late, tried to stem the lightning spread of protest.