Does Twitter make sense?

August 19, 2007

To begin with, I have to say, I am not a Twitter user. I have signed up for an account but have not used it at all. I, personally, prefer tools such as Skype. But still, I am willing to be convinced that it does bring an advantage for personal use. I imagine it can be very useful, though, so far, it seems to me another ‘great time consuming application.’ I wonder whether it is really an advantage to be hyperconnected. “Like any good pusher, services like Twitter don’t answer existing needs; they create new ones and then fill them. (Times)” I sense it speeds up the anyway fast communication and information sharing through the web. However, I also imagine it can be an application for new senseful forms of communication, activism and networking, especially with its connection to the mobile phone.
Given that assumption, I collected the following links about twitter:

Mexico City’s Earthquake, reported on Twitter first
The Potential of Twitter in Africa and map of Twitter in Africa
“So the launching of Twitter provides a good alternative considering that the use of mobile phones is much higher than that of computers. In Malawi for example, there are about 50,000 Internet users against about 700,000 mobile phone users out of a population of about 12 million.
Africa moves on: Twitter is just the beginning
Twitter in an organization or company: Internal Twittering
Emergency 2.0: Twitter helps public services speed up ahead the government in crisis situations
“Twitter might play a substantive role in emergency response because of its ability to share location-based, real-time information among social networks.”
Activism: Urgent Action IM Bots and Twitter for Darfur
“But to me the critical thing about Twitter is the way it can be updated (and read) via mobile, and how that can reach in to urgent areas or situations in a way the internet can’t (yet).”
Human rights: Global Voices is now on Twitter
How human rights activists use Twitter
“My favorite example of repurposing recently is my friend Alaa’s use of Twitter to coordinate activities of activists in Egypt.”

These articles show how Twitter can be used in all sorts of ways, such as to allow fast messaging and alert a network. It seems good to give notice and to feel connected. It can be an important tool for activism because it pings every member of a network and it is more personal and directed than blogs. I imagine also twittervision version for human rights worldwide or environmental violations in a region.

Future trends of mobile activism The simple
Mobile Activism in Africa Why and ho
Mobile phone innovation may not happen where you think it does The first
My take on the state of mobile phones for developments As an outc
What does local content have to do with low-bandwidth applications? High bandw

Tags: africa, mobile, sharing, web2.0 activism, communication

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Comments

4 Comments so far

JKE on August 26, 2007 8:51 am
I agree, the interesting thing about Twitter is the structure behind it and how new messages are spread.

Maybe they should rename twitter into Buschtrommel.
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