Why Twitter Matters

The cover story on Twitter that Steven Berlin Johnson wrote for Time Magazine ran in early June – as it happens, the same week that I met Steven when he keynoted MarketingProfs marketing conference in Boston. (I’d like to say that it was amazing timing on our part. But the truth is, it was simply dumb luck.)

In his talk to almost 400 marketers gathered in Boston, Steven related Twitter to historical “hubs” of innovation– places like coffee salons and urban neighborhoods which were characterized by an open flow of ideas. Businesses can model their approach to client outreach based on these examples, Steven said.

And perhaps most interestingly, we can influence how we do it: “We’re getting to invent what this new platform can do,” Steven said. See Steven’s thoughts on that here:

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Tim Berry of Palo Alto Software crystallizes it nicely:

“Although it’s a lesser example, it does remind me of what I saw (and lived through) about 25 years ago with the personal computer revolution; and again, about 15 years ago, when the business world caught onto the web.

“It’s not as big as either of those, because there’s no fundamental change in technology,” Tim adds. “But the phenomenon of bandwagon is there, and in that sense it’s similar.”

I couldn’t agree more. Twitter matters because of what it is: at its heart, a platform that offers an exchange of ideas and information on an unprecedented scale.

People love to make fun of Twitter. In truth, it’s easy to mock its endless stream of self-promotion, inane commentary, and what people ate for breakfast. But beyond that, Twitter offers a view of what’s front of mind: What we are paying attention to, worried about, reading, talking about, and what we are thinking. In other words, Twitter matters because it’s about what really matters -- for you, for me, and all of us.