Twitter’s Digital Thought Bubble
I wrote a post not too long ago about Twitter Power. Twitter is a micro-blogging tool where the original premise was to have users answer the question: “What are you doing?” However, like all things Web 2.0, people have taken control of the application and brought it to a whole new level — two snaps and a circle to the peeps!
Today, most people have migrated from answering the original question to leveraging Twitter as a digital thought bubble. It’s almost as if the question should now be: “What are you thinking?” It’s an absolutely fascinating evolution because it defies human limitations and allows people to see what others are thinking at a moment in time. Twistori.com is a great amplification of this evolution. Twistori aggregates global tweets and categorizes them under love, hate, think, believe, feel, and wish. In almost every tweet that scrolls live on the site virtually none of them are in response to Twitter’s original question. Check it out.
Twitter’s digital thought bubble application has never been more profound than by its use by attendees at a conference. At O’Reilly’s recent Web 2.0 EXPO in San Francisco, people twittered during panel discussions. The smart moderators monitored the tweets live and redirected the conversations based on the content of the tweets. Seriously, it was such a trip because it was as if the audience had thought bubbles above their heads and the moderators ability to read their minds (digitally speaking) forced the speakers to be accountable to what the audience wanted to hear. So the moderators would cut speakers off and say things like, “people think this discussion is too much of a sales pitch and want to hear more about x, y and z.”
I think one of the things that makes Twitter’s digital thought bubble so intoxicating is the limitation of 140 characters. People take that limitation and deliver rockstastic content in a single short statement. Generally speaking, most of us have a whole lot of buzz going on in our heads, yet Twitter forces us to communicate what we are thinking in a succinct line. The creativity in people’s tweets is more entertaining than anything else I have experienced in the physical world and it only takes a second of your time. It’s like a quick fix that infuses your world with humor and insight but doesn’t take anything more than a second or two.
If you Twitter, are you sticking with tweets that respond to the original question or are you tweeting what you are thinking?

Subscribe for Email Updates
RSS Feed
Technorati
Delicious bookmark
Bloglines
May 18th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Both - I used it to chat with friends as well as to post random updates and/or thoughts. It’s totally addicting!
May 18th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
marcie, i totally agree. when i try to explain twitter to friends who have never heard of it they just don’t get it. once i get them to try it, they are hooked. i like to call it a “good addiction.” i’m sure there is an essence of denial in that label.
k2