Insightful post from O’Reilly about the strengths and weaknesses of Twitter, which echo very basic thoughts I’ve had about the service. Mark Drapeau goes into much more depth than i’ve thought about the topic. He starts out saying:
Perhaps the most common reason given for joining the microsharing site Twitter is “participating in the conversation” or some version of that. I myself am guilty ofusing this explanation. But is Twitter truly a conversational platform? Here I argue that the underlying mechanics of Twitter more closely resemble the knowledge co-creation seen in wikis than the dynamics seen with conversational tools like instant messaging and interactions within online social networks.
What makes for a good conversation? There are obviously many different kinds of conversations, but I think what most people would consider a conversation has a number of key elements:
Twitter is supposedly breaking more into the mainstream, but for me it is far from certain that the attributes that have served it well in its niche pioneer audience of techies will translate into a mass medium. The lack of ability to define what Twitter does has made it part of the fun so far, but will hinder its broader adoption.