Idea No. 34: Twitter

Six and a half years ago Twitter was created by a man named Jack Dorsey, like most creations it started off as just an idea.

This afternoon on the T I had my first personal expetience with the power of Twitter.  I’ve had a Twitter account for a few years now.  In college, it was a way of texting multiple people throughout the day, often about episodes from crazy professors.  It was self-conscious, sometimes mean, and rarely helpful.

This approach to Twitter has led to criticisms of it being an egocentric, self-centered constant feed of what people have had for breakfast and other useless pieces of information.  I’ve always had a difficult time aligning this side of Twitter with the side that was used in the Arab Spring and is utilized by countless other people around the world to spread ideas.

This morning, my first day back to work, I sat on the bus and read Tina Seelig’s book inGenius.  One of the chapters described the work of Tom Chatfield on gamification.  It seemed like the type of thing my dad, the head of social media at a community health center and avid blogger would enjoy.  Over Christmas he had shown me the TEDtalks given by Jane McGonigal which carry a similar message about how life can be viewed as a game.

I tweeted this to him and he responded with a tweet which tagged Tom Chatfield so I replied back with both Chatfield and Seelig tagged. Now I’m sitting on the T again with my bag of art supplies on my way to teach at a school in Cambridge and I saw that Tom Chatfield has tweeted back to both of us sending us to a place on his website that explained his ideas.

From this exchange I finally understand the true worth of Twitter. Communicating ideas and connecting people in a way that doesn’t happen anywhere else.  I plan to tweet this post once I get home tonight and who knows what will spring up next!

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