survival of the twitt-est

Maybe its me, but I’m only now recognizing the power of Twitter in communication. Its going to be around a long time. Here’s the evolution to me.

At first, I saw it as a cool piece of technology that was more of an abbreviated blog entry, broadcast to your inner circle.

Then, I viewed it as a supplement or replacement for RSS feeds, where a user opts-in to a source, awaiting its next content.

Then (for months) I viewed it as a passive-aggressive channel for narcissists. Well, I still do – especially because most of the people using it are, well, self-centered extroverts.

But now, with the wisdom of the crowd comes many fascinating attributes:

- searching for any specific content on twitter (http://search.twitter.com) gives you an immediate (current) pulse on that subject, right now.
- those people or organizations with an enormous audience (”following”) can broadcast or even command attention and action at a moment’s notice
- monitoring Twitter for a specific phrase or pronoun helps keep a pulse on its sentiment (KEY for PR people and companies: read this WSJ article)
- it is a two-way viral/word-of-mouth “social” marketing tool that can be used locally or beyond

I’m clearly getting old – its getting hard to stay on top of the things that help you stay on top of things.