I started using twitter towards the end of last year and it’s been an illuminating experience. I’ve used it for all sorts of things, so I was particularly interested when Lewis PR alerted me (by twitter, of course!) to a blog post published by Mikko Hypponen, entitled Twitter as a professional tool.
Mikko makes the very valid point that twitter can be a very useful tool in the context of business. He says:
Before Twitter, when something major would be going on [in the field of data security] , the first warnings and initial discussion about it would be in private – via e-mail, private mailing lists and text messages. Now much of that would happen in Twitter – in public. And you wouldn’t even need to have a Twitter account to follow it.
And, of course, he’s absolutely right. It’s really useful in this kind of context, and not just for data security specialists. But wait a minute. Earlier on in the same post he argues:
Many don’t really understand what Twitter is all about. They think it’s a system where people can tell others about their daily chores (“just had corn flakes for breakfast!”). This is not what Twitter is for.
Needless to say, I think he’s wrong. In the same kind of way that Ken Olsen of Digital Equipment was wrong in 1977 when he said:
There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
Twitter does have many uses outside of the professional arena. Today, the 38 twitter feeds I follow have alerted me that I’d forgotten Derby County have a match tonight against Plymouth Argyle and I can listen to it on BBC Radio Derby; that Bill Gates has been making odd pronouncements about censorship in China (courtesy of AmnestyUK) and that Julie of Natural Health has had a rotten day (sorry to hear it, I hope tomorrow goes better.) Twitter has also provided me with inspiration from both a Christian perspective and that of Voltaire, from the French Enlightenment (“Man is free the moment he wishes to be” tweets paula134.)
Life’s richer than just work. Twitter reflects that richness.
And if my daughter, who’s several hundred miles away at university wants to tweet to the world (and to me) that she’s had cornflakes for breakfast, that’s just fine. I, her family and friends and our neighbours (the whole world) will know she’s all right.
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