Twittermania

A couple years ago, I started hearing all the tech podcasters talking about the newest fad, Twitter. Described as "micro-blogging", well you know what Twitter is. A way to syndicate a quick thought or your location to people who are interested stalking you.

Twitter grew, and grew, and with the rise in popularity came numerous outages in the service (I suppose it's hard to afford the infrastructure for ever-increasing volume when the company doesn't really have a way of generating money). But it just got more popular.

The tech podcasters had a good prediction, though. Once a celebrity (Britney was the oft-cited example) figured out how easily they could easily leverage the app as a way to reach their fan base, Twitter would explode.

And it has. Britney was perhaps one of the first, biggest stars to join (although it's believed that it's her PR people actually "tweeting"... probably because of the lack of grammar and spelling mistakes). Ashton Kutcher got in early. It was one of the many Web 2.0 tools employed effectively by the Obama campaign. Shaq started using it to give away tickets before games. Of course, the adoption of Twitter as a marketing platform by celebrities hasn't come without it's flops and moments of humor.

Then a few months ago I saw Jimmy Fallon using Twitter as a way to let fans send questions for his guests on his show. A month later I saw SportsCenter posting athletes' tweets. Pokerroad has teamed with Twitter to provide up to the minute updates during the WSOP. It's no longer a geek buzzword, it's everywhere now.

And there have been numerous rumors of tech giants in talks to buy Twitter - even though Twitter still has no way of making money!

I personally have no problem if people like to use Twitter to stay in touch with friends, follow people of interest, etc. To each his own. I think my attitude towards it kind of falls in line with this Conan bit, though:



But then, just when I feel somewhat justified for believing Twitter is a little silly, it becomes one of the only methods for getting on-the-scene news out to the world from the riots in Iran. The credibility of Twitter-based news can always be questioned, but it may be the best metaphor for the shift in "breaking news" journalism. The average citizen with a camera phone and Twitter now dictate the stories for journalists to run down.

And it's no different at TLATL. Instead of Coovo telling me what to write, me telling Ryan what to write, and Ryan telling Coovo what to write, we will be following the crowd. And what better way to dive right in than to head to Iran, meld in with the crowd, and work as undercover journalists. And you can follow it all on our Twitter feed! Hope to hear from you all soon.