The Twitterian Conspiracy: How Social Media becomes pervasive

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On this day... 17 December 2007, two Twitter-related things happened:

• the Canberra Twitter Underground Brigade convened, and


• Twitter went away, and more than five hours later, still isn't back.

We're stuck with this:

I have this private theory that social computing isn't about the social at all, but about the ubiquosity. That is, the pervasiveness, the property of being everywhere at once.

I spoke to my lovely Donna on the phone earlier - but knowing that she (and everyone else) is cut off from Twitter at the moment was, well, weird. My world was not as complete.

About half of my Twitter friends are in my mobile phone address book - and most of the rest are available this very second via email. So it isn't as if I couldn't reach out and touch them if I wanted to - it isn't as if I can't fulfil the need to communicate with them - but I am left feeling bereft, lost because I can't see their little text snippets floating past me.

I think that social media is about pervasiveness, penetration, headspace, eyeballs. I think that 'social' is only the delivery boy - the transmission mechanism, not the end goal.
We're consenting to raise someone's stock price. We are social beings, we need to communicate - and Twitter/Jaiku/Digg/Facebook are taking advantage of that in the same way that fast food chains prey on the obese. Will they be the cigarette companies of tomorrow, doomed to pay for the massive profits they are raking in now?

Posted by AndrewBoyd on December 17, 2007 | Permalink
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