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The Raw Democratic Power of Twitter: Known and Unknown

June 14th, 2007

In response to Elinor Mill’s CNet Perspective “The Case against Twitter“:

Ok. Twitter can waste time. So can going to Starbucks or the movies. But with Twitter there’s some nascent power and learning going on.

Here’s 4 ways Twitter adds good things to us who use it.

1.) People who would normally work isolated, can interact with people all over the globe to get answers to questions, meaningful or trivial.

2.) Twitter provides direct “eye-witness” accounts from independent observers at the same event, occurring in near real-time.

3.) Twitter allows the development of light social bonds to form amongst people from a variety of backgrounds, cultures, geographies etc. It is the social gravity of the web. A weak but important force in this era of “bowling alone”.

4.) Finally, we don’t know what we don’t know about the reverberations yet to emanate from Twitter and other “social network” sites. I for one will bet on the unknown and subscribe to H.L. Mencken’s quote -

“Penetrating so many secrets we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless calmly licking its chops.”

PS: Should we ever need a popular uprising to protect our Democracy, Twitter seems a great tool to get the word out!

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Entry Filed under: Decision Velocity - General