What a week it has been for Twitter!
News of the Hudson River Crash was broken first on Twitter by Laura Conaway who works not for a mainstream news organization but for Planet Money, an economic web magazine on the NPR's web. How and why did Laura scoop the street? She is one of the most plugged in news folks who use Twitter. Twitter was the core feed that built the story.
Today millions of Torontonians have been without power in one of the coldest days of decades. How are people finding out what is going on and what to do with no power or heat? Twitter #darkto is the feed.
In the new year, the Sun, THE mass media mainstream paper in the UK. The paper that invented the Page 3 girl. The Sun is going to make Twitter a major channel! (Freshnetworks Blog)
Whilst many people may be using Twitter, it only becomes really useful as a social media tool when it starts to meet mass adoption. Just like the first fax machine, or the first use of email, Twitter and other social media tools become more useful and more rewarding the more people that use them. They will only really come into their own when they stop being niche and start being popular. To date, I don’t think that Twitter has been ‘popular’ in this, and the common, meaning of the word. It has been something that a large group of people have used and got benefit from, but this group has to some extent been restricted or limited - people who share certain interests or common characteristics of some kind.
The fact that the Sun is now reporting about Twitter suggests that it is starting to gain the kind of mass, or popular, influence that will see it really come of age.
So to help Twitter come of age - to help those who know help others to feel comfortable about using it - we at fast Forward Blog offer you our first Guide for the Social Revolution - The Fast Forward Blog Guide to Twitter.
I have gone back over nearly three years of posting by the FF Blog team and I have combed the 'sphere for what I think are the best sources, stories and tools. My brilliant publisher Hylton has created a new format - a kind of Blog Book - a nested/hyperlinked/aggregated set of articles that pulls it all together.
Having done all of this, it helps to spend days and days doing nothing else but thinking about one thing - I have come to a few conclusions:
- Twitter's simplicity and ease of use added to the substantial return it offers is a reason why it may finally be the Trojan Horse that breaches the walls of the traditional institution - already if you claim to be a news organization and you don't use Twitter well - you are really losing out. It infects. It is truly viral.
- That the best way to use it is also within the reach of all of us - you don't have to be a Scoble with 48,000 followers to have influence or to find stuff - what you need is to have between 30-100 people in your core group who care for you and you care for them. This core group is enough to open up the full power of the total 'sphere - This is not just my opinion - I include the science
- Twitter is not only good for you because it is useful. It is good for you because it can offer you the endorphin high of grooming - laughter, friendship and yes love are are the heart of its appeal and impact. Nothing helps our health and stress like this - and this is the time for getting and giving strokes. Just as language itself enabled early humans to reduce the time and expand the space needed for grooming (45% for apes and 25% for us), so Twitter may enable us to groom across time and space.
