About Twitter

I found an interesting article about current communications technology at Read/Write Web which suggests that 'email is becoming an endangered species'.

Just when I was getting used to it!

The author, Alex Iskold, produces a four-way grid which sets 'one-to-one' against 'broadcast' communication, and 'slow/lengthy' against 'quick/compact' delivery.

Iskold suggests that social networking sites like Twitter are a possible way forward and occupy the fourth square on his grid - broadcast communication that is also quick and compact, with facility for immediate feedback.

I joined Twitter and it looks fun, but I don't know anyone else who uses it so I am broadcasting fast to no-one at the moment!

I can see the advantages of sites like Twitter which exploit the speed and real-time interaction of broadband, and add the archiving resources of a web site; but they also depend on the concept of a 'social network', a curiously closed - or maybe, ajar? - social phenomenon. I can't get away from the feeling of cliques. The designers have chosen the trope 'What are you doing at the moment?' as a message prompt, which rather enhances the idea of social chat, keeping in touch, being busy etc.

I don't have anyone on Twitter (a weird form of loneliness, or social isolation!) but I do have a large network through email. Could the latter possibly migrate to the former or something like it? Maybe. But the live-update process of Twitter seems to suit an informal, chunk-size register, whereas email seems more flexible and capable of accommodating multiple registers and message-types, and does not depend on a social network of 'friends' or 'followers'. Of course it also has 'broadcast' facilities, although, at the moment at least, it would be good to do without the spam!

Twitter - as its name suggests - is more of a chat medium/message board, and although it is potentially a 'broadcast' medium like YouTube or a blog, at the moment it resembles a glorified form of instant messaging, with perhaps a bit more outreach. It is suspended uneasily - and perhaps creatively so - between public broadcast, social group building, and private intimacy.

For the moment at least, email can do all this, and more, so I can only see sites like Twitter co-existing with email services, and eventually blending with them. One thing you can say about email is that it's really easy to get started - you only need to know one person - whereas getting into Twitter seems much more of a social challenge if you don't already have off-line contacts using it.

It's interesting, though, how those who design and market sites like Twitter do so explicitly with 'social networking' in mind. This term has migrated massively, and is as closely associated with the web now as the word 'information' was ten years ago.