[LINK] The Battle of the Conferences.

[Stilgherrian]

On 07/05/2009, at 11:29 PM, Sylvano wrote:
> Interesting.  My initial foray into twitter is more like the  
> experience of a
> large party with lots of strangers, some acquaintances and a couple  
> of friends
> mingling, rather than a relaxed dinner party with close friends.
>
> As you move about looking for people, you listen to snippets of  
> conversations
> here and there, being bored by some and being drawn to others.   
> Occasionally
> you find that you stop to chat with someone and decide to move away  
> to a
> quieter corner away from the music and babble to have a more solid  
> chin wag on
> some topic of mutual interest.

And, indeed, some folks in 2008 were describing Twitter as the world's  
largest non-stop global cocktail party.

I find that many of the "mainstream" critics who are at the let's- 
ridicule-Twitter stage tend to lead off by saying that a lot of  
material on Twitter is "trivial"... what they had for breakfast, what  
they're doing now etc. My response to those people is: "Yes, of course  
it is. That's the point."

Robin Dunbar's "Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language" makes  
it clear that the exchange of seemingly-trivial status information is  
at the core of social bonding. Twitter allows us to bond at a distance  
-- and , if we choose, make that information public so we don't have  
to give it to everyone individually, one at a time.

Mark Pesce and I touched upon this in our Crikey Conversations video.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/04/02/crikey-conversations-imagining-the-internet-in-2020/
or
http://is.gd/xiXj

Stil


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