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When Twitter started one could say it was to relieve boredom. Who needs a stream of user-generated content about what some stranger in San Francisco ate for bre
by qq66 15y ago
When Twitter started one could say it was to relieve boredom. Who needs a stream of user-generated content about what some stranger in San Francisco ate for breakfast?
5 years later, Twitter has been instrumental in organizing protests that have brought down governments. YouTube was used to expose a senatorial candidate making a racist remark and cost him the election. Facebook was instrumental in the Obama election campaign, without which we might have had President Sarah Palin.
Anything can become anything else.
- tsunamifury 15y agoCertainly true, I am not arguing that communications platforms are not able to find productive uses. It's more than for every twitter, there are hundreds of failed or carbon-copy twitters which do not focus on any sort of productive solution. They simply copy eachother with the idea that more noise is better.
- qq66 15y agoBut how to distinguish these? Of 100 stupid sounding ideas, how do you know that Twitter will be the one to change the world? You don't. You have to start all 100 to find out.
- tsunamifury 15y agoYou can tell when the pitch boils down to, this is twitter but for XXXX.