Twitter and the Event Browser for the Human Network
I’m an avid Twitter user, or, as I like to describe it, “Twit”. Twitter uptake in the UK has grown >900% in the last year, driven mainly by celebrity endorsements such as Stephen Fry @stephenfry. If you don’t know who he is - look him up. Unlike many celeb Twits, he does it himself. It’s not PR. It’s personal. Sometimes he’s simply describing a walk he’s had through London, other times, he’s TwitPic’ing an image of himself and some friends getting stuck in an elevator in a London tower block. All the time it’s an interesting and personal insight into the life of a fascinating person.
Again - the use of Twitter and TwitPic exploded as a result of the Hudson River Airplane Incident - where the first and best image of the crash was made by @jkrums using his iPhone. Look it up…
When you’ve got a lot of followers or follow a lot of people - you need a bit of a power Twitter client. This is where TweetDeck comes in handy. TweetDeck lets you look at your feeds, group them and watch trends as they are ‘Tweeted’ around the world. As news breaks, you see your incoming tweets starting to discuss the issue, you see common re-tweets and trends start to develop. As I typed this today, one of the biggest tweet trends was the Bank of England Rate Cut. Using this, you can start to get a feel for how people are thinking about the news or the event - how it impacts them and what the feel about it.
As someone with a long experience in Network Management, I’ve likened TweetDeck to an EventBrowser for the Human Network. As events come in - they are processed by each individual and tweeted and retweeted and trends develop. By watching these trends we can see what the ‘Twitterverse’ is discussing - what are the big issues, what interests people and in many ways, find out what is happening before it is syndicated in the regular news sites.
I find it fascinating to see how this develops and changes the way we communicate. How it returns influence to individuals and the challenges that companies now face in using such mechanisms appropriately.
