How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live - TIME - About

Highlighted by lizmargarita

The one thing you can say for certain about Twitter is that it makes a terrible first impression. You hear about this new service that lets you send 140-character updates to your "followers," and you think, Why does the world need this, exactly? It's not as if we were all sitting around four years ago scratching our heads and saying, "If only there were a technology that would allow me to send a message to my 50 friends, alerting them in real time about my choice of breakfast cereal."

Highlighted by ellening

it makes a terrible first impression

Highlighted by katepe

The one thing you can say for certain about Twitter is that it makes a terrible first impression. You hear about this new service that lets you send 140-character updates to your "followers," and you think, Why does the world need this, exactly? It's not as if we were all sitting around four years ago scratching our heads and saying, "If only there were a technology that would allow me to send a message to my 50 friends, alerting them in real time about my choice of breakfast cereal."

Highlighted by shareski

Why does the world need this, exactly? It's not as if we were all sitting around four years ago scratching our heads and saying,

Highlighted by kitchenerd

It's not as if we were all sitting around four years ago scratching our heads and saying, "If only there were a technology that would allow me to send a message to my 50 friends, alerting them in real time about my choice of breakfast cereal."

Highlighted by goodwordediting

Evan Williams, Twitter's co-creator, a couple of times in the dotcom '90s when he was launching Blogger.com.

Highlighted by bfurst

threat that blogging posed to our attention span

Highlighted by bfurst

What was next? Software that let you send a single punctuation mark to describe your mood?

Highlighted by yansu123

And yet as millions of devotees have discovered, Twitter turns out to have unsuspected depth. In part this is because hearing about what your friends had for breakfast is actually more interesting than it sounds. The technology writer Clive Thompson calls this "ambient awareness": by following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines. We don't think it at all moronic to start a phone call with a friend by asking how her day is going. Twitter gives you the same information without your even having to ask.

Highlighted by avanelk

And yet as millions of devotees have discovered, Twitter turns out to have unsuspected depth.

Highlighted by coffeeandtea

Clive Thompson calls this "ambient awareness": by following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines. We don't think it at all moronic to start a phone call with a friend by asking how her day is going. Twitter gives you the same information without your even having to ask.

Highlighted by bfurst

The technology writer Clive Thompson calls this "ambient awareness": by following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines.

Highlighted by goodwordediting

technology writer Clive Thompson calls this "ambient awareness":

Highlighted by kylemurley

And yet as millions of devotees have discovered, Twitter turns out to have unsuspected depth. In part this is because hearing about what your friends had for breakfast is actually more interesting than it sounds. The technology writer Clive Thompson calls this "ambient awareness": by following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines. We don't think it at all moronic to start a phone call with a friend by asking how her day is going. Twitter gives you the same information without your even having to ask.

Highlighted by sgdineen

ambient awareness

Highlighted by dobiho

y following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routine

Highlighted by yansu123

ambient awareness

Highlighted by hamacleod

"ambient awareness": by following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines.

Highlighted by coffeeandtea

"ambient awareness"

Highlighted by dsparkswalker

We don't think it at all moronic to start a phone call with a friend by asking how her day is going. Twitter gives you the same information without your even having to ask.

Highlighted by dobiho

The social warmth of all those stray details shouldn't be taken lightly.

Highlighted by goodwordediting

The social warmth of all those stray details shouldn't be taken lightly. But I think there is something even more profound in what has happened to Twitter over the past two years, something that says more about the culture that has embraced and expanded Twitter at such extraordinary speed. Yes, the breakfast-status updates turned out to be more interesting than we thought. But the key development with Twitter is how we've jury-rigged the system to do things that its creators never dreamed of.

In short, the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it's doing to us. It's what we're doing to it.

Highlighted by avanelk

The social warmth of all those stray details shouldn't be taken lightly

Highlighted by kylemurley

But the key development with Twitter is how we've jury-rigged the system to do things that its creators never dreamed of.

Highlighted by rooster67

the key development with Twitter is how we've jury-rigged the system to do things that its creators never dreamed of.

Highlighted by kylemurley

In short, the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it's doing to us. It's what we're doing to it.

Highlighted by melmcbride

In short, the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it's doing to us. It's what we're doing to it.

Highlighted by cdhresearch

the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it's doing to us. It's what we're doing to it.

Highlighted by dobiho

In short, the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it's doing to us. It's what we're doing to it.

Highlighted by leslaur

the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it's doing to us. It's what we're doing to it.

Highlighted by kylemurley

Earlier this year I attended a daylong conference in Manhattan devoted to education reform. Called Hacking Education

Highlighted by conductress

Twenty years ago, the ideas exchanged in that conversation would have been confined to the minds of the participants.

Highlighted by melmcbride

Called Hacking Education, it was a small, private affair: 40-odd educators, entrepreneurs, scholars, philanthropists and venture capitalists, all engaged in a sprawling six-hour conversation about the future of schools.

Highlighted by bfurst

Hacking Education

Highlighted by hamacleod

Hacking Education

Highlighted by kylemurley

future of schools

Highlighted by kylemurley

the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it's doing to us. It's what we're doing to it.

Highlighted by sgdineen

But this event was happening in 2009, so trailing behind the real-time, real-world conversation was an equally real-time conversation on Twitter. At the outset of the conference, our hosts announced that anyone who wanted to post live commentary about the event via Twitter should include the word #hackedu in his 140 characters. In the room, a large display screen showed a running feed of tweets. Then we all started talking, and as we did, a shadow conversation unfolded on the screen: summaries of someone's argument, the occasional joke, suggested links for further reading. At one point, a brief argument flared up between two participants in the room — a tense back-and-forth that transpired silently on the screen as the rest of us conversed in friendly tones.

Highlighted by uandeal

that anyone who wanted to post live commentary about the event via Twitter should include the word #hackedu in his 140 characters

Highlighted by conductress

the real-time, real-world conversation was an equally real-time conversation on Twitter.

Highlighted by dobiho

t the outset of the conference, our hosts announced that anyone who wanted to post live commentary about the event via Twitter should include the word #hackedu in his 140 characters. In the room, a large display screen showed a running feed of tweets. Then we all started talking, and as we did, a shadow conversation unfolded on the screen

Highlighted by dobiho

In the room, a large display screen showed a running feed of tweets. Then we all started talking, and as we did, a shadow conversation unfolded on the screen: summaries of someone's argument, the occasional joke,

Highlighted by coffeeandtea

#hackedu

Highlighted by bfurst

In the room, a large display screen showed a running feed of tweets.

Highlighted by kylemurley

#hackedu

Highlighted by kylemurley

A few experts grumbled publicly about how they hadn't been invited to the conference.

Highlighted by melmcbride

Twittersphere

Highlighted by dobiho

adding their observations or proposing topics for further exploration

Highlighted by kylemurley

we pulled interesting ideas and questions from the screen and integrated them into our face-to-face conversation.

Highlighted by bfurst

we pulled interesting ideas and questions from the screen and integrated them into our face-to-face conversation.

Highlighted by kylemurley

Injecting Twitter into that conversation fundamentally changed the rules of engagement.

Highlighted by melmcbride

It added a second layer of discussion and brought a wider audience into what would have been a private exchange.

Highlighted by melmcbride

public record of hundreds of tweets documenting the conversation

Highlighted by kylemurley

Injecting Twitter into that conversation fundamentally changed the rules of engagement. It added a second layer of discussion and brought a wider audience into what would have been a private exchange.

Highlighted by cdhresearch

Injecting Twitter into that conversation fundamentally changed the rules of engagement. It added a second layer of discussion and brought a wider audience into what would have been a private exchange. And it gave the event an afterlife on the Web. Yes, it was built entirely out of 140-character messages, but the sum total of those tweets added up to something truly substantive, like a suspension bridge made of pebbles.

Highlighted by coffeeandtea

Injecting Twitter into that conversation fundamentally changed the rules of engagement

Highlighted by dobiho

a second layer of discussion and brought a wider audience into what would have been a private exchange

Highlighted by bfurst

It added a second layer of discussion and brought a wider audience into what would have been a private exchange

Highlighted by dobiho

Injecting Twitter into that conversation fundamentally changed the rules of engagement. It added a second layer of discussion and brought a wider audience into what would have been a private exchang

Highlighted by leslaur

Injecting Twitter into that conversation fundamentally changed the rules of engagement. It added a second layer of discussion and brought a wider audience into what would have been a private exchange.

Highlighted by yansu123

Injecting Twitter

Highlighted by kylemurley

fundamentally changed the rules of engagement

Highlighted by kylemurley

Yes, it was built entirely out of 140-character messages, but the sum total of those tweets added up to something truly substantive, like a suspension bridge made of pebbles.

Highlighted by dobiho

gave the event an afterlife on the Web

Highlighted by kylemurley

This is what I ultimately find most inspiring about the Twitter phenomenon. We are living through the worst economic crisis in generations, with apocalyptic headlines threatening the end of capitalism as we know it, and yet in the middle of this chaos, the engineers at Twitter headquarters are scrambling to keep the servers up, application developers are releasing their latest builds, and ordinary users are figuring out all the ingenious ways to put these tools to use. There's a kind of resilience here that is worth savoring.

Highlighted by sgdineen

How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live - TIME

Popularity Report

Total Popularity Score: 0

Rank

URL Tag Cloud

Groups (0)

Related Lists

Bookmark History

Public Comment

Public Sticky notes

Site Community

Readers (152)