So I get pinged by Tim Nudd for an Adweek interview via twitter for #tweetfreak on the subject of 'availability'.
then twitter went down. poetry. Hopefully its because of the postponed maintenance to help Iranians tweet their streets, but still funny.
At the same time as these shenanigans, Kara Swisher wrote a great piece on Twitter as the Forrest Gump of International Relations - some choice bits:
"...Harvard University Professor Jonathan Zittrain said: 'It is easy for Twitter feeds to be echoed everywhere else in the world. The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what make it so powerful.'
Zittrain was being quoted in a New York Times piece today about the use of Twitter by those protesting the election results in Iran, as other means of modern mass communications–such as email, Facebook and texting–got blocked.
In other words, Twitter is so simplistic and silly that it is a perfect digital tool to overthrow a government–which is kind of makes the trendy microblogging service the Forrest Gump of international relations.
While not always reliable, masses of people chattering away has always been the most fluid way in which news has been disseminated and received. Although much of that can be mundane and borderline idiotic, one cannot deny its impact.
What one can deny, though, is the hype that inevitably follows in the wake of every one of these breakthrough technologies like Twitter.
That’s a mistake, because it is how the tools are used by people, more than the tools themselves, that should be the focus."
Nice, Kara!
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