Last Thursday, in Shari Weiss' PR class, we had the visit of Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter (and one of the 100 most influent people of 2009 according to Time Magazine). Twitter is a social network that allows its members to do micro-blogging, those posts are called tweets. While it was created 3 years ago, it only really attracted people last year during the American Presidential election, the twitterers exchanging the last results and trend from the polling places.
Jack's intervention in our class was a delight (watch the videos). He is accessible, even if U.S. Twitter visits has increased of a 1000% in one year (according to Time Magazine, April 20, 2009). He explained us how he came up with the idea of Twitter, what his vision was. He sees Twitter as a tool for people to learn and participate, and thinks that just as for the rest of technology it will be as valuable as the users make it become.
His simplicity reflects in the way to use Twitter, only 140 characters to express what you want to share with people. But it is powerful, being a potential tool for Democracy in Iraq (watch CNN reportage here)
This one hour class was way too short, but will stay engraved in me.
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They (Twitter) will never truly take off until they integrate the service with cellphones without third party software. If you could tweet just by texting (555)555-5555, and comment on tweets by replying to that text, it would make twitter universally mobile. Sure you can download software, but its not available for all phones, and a lot off people don't download the software that is available. I think the lack of universal mobility is the reason 60% of people leave twitter.
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ReplyDeleteThat class will stay engraved in my brain forever also. Had he not spoken to our class about the simplicity, I may not have ever really given twitter a chance. Its strange how something so simple, can to seem so complex to our generation. We are always looking for there to be something more to it.
ReplyDeleteI especially liked the idea of how Twitter was invented. Jack was inspired by cab drivers in NY. Sitting in the backseat, hearing the cab drivers report their status and pickups over a radio. Jack converted this "cab-radio" into Twitter, letting his friends update their status, position and thoughts. I guess we need to get out there in order to get inspired for new communication forums!
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