The Twitter Revolution

The world is a-twitter about Twitter, the new social networking messaging service. It is the current "rave", and I think rightly so. Twitter can bring about significant changes.

First, a brief description of Twitter: a one-way, multi-target, subscription-model instant messaging service.

Instant messaging and its close cousin text messaging are two-way, two-party (occasionally more) messaging services. I can establish an IM session with you and then we can exchange private messages. (Private to the extent that the carriers and eavesdroppers can read them, but others cannot.) Or I can establish an IM session with you and someone else and then the three of us can exchange messages, each seeing what each person sends.

Twitter is different. The first difference is that Twitter is one-way: messages go from sender to recipient with no return messages. Second, Twitter is multi-target and messages can go from one sender to multiple recipients. (Sounds like e-mail without the "reply" button, doesn't it?)

The third difference is what makes Twitter revolutionary: it uses a subscription model. Senders do not pick recipients; recipients pick the senders that they want to "follow". The receiver is in control, not the sender. This is quite a reversal of power.

Corporations could use Twitter to keep people informed of events. (Corporations already use instant messaging, e-mail, telephones, and paper memos, why not Twitter?) I suspect that a corporation would want a private Twitter network, available to employees but not outsiders. But the subscription model used by Twitter is quite at odds from the usual corporate distribution list. The normal corporate distribution list is centrally controlled, and depending on the situation one must ask for permission to be added to a list or perhaps one is put on a list despite one's desires. Twitter changes that thinking, by giving the "opt-in" and "opt-out" choice to the recipient.

With a Twitter service, the sender (or "Twitterer" in the parlance) has no control over the distribution of the sent messages ("Tweets", in the parlance). With e-mail a manager can include all direct reports and exclude members of other teams, with Twitter that is not possible. It is akin to posting the location and time of a group meeting and not mandating specific individuals but allowing anyone to attend.

Changing the corporation's internal Twitter service to allow such forced reciept of Tweets and to limit Tweets to specific individuals would change the Twitter service back into instant messaging with a distribution list. And that is a very different animal. It is a different social contract, one in which control remains with the sender.

Twitter is revolutionary because it places control in the hands of the recipients. It is a democratizing approach, allowing people to select the information that they receive. Telephone calls, e-mail, and paper memos that use sender-maintained distribution lists are dictatorial.

I think corporations will benefit from Twitter. It is not a complete replacement for paper memos and e-mails, or instant messaging. It complements these services. Twitter can replace a lot of status reports and e-mails, and notifications about events (such as test results or group meetings), and it's subscriber model can make the distribution of messages more efficient.

Viva la revolucion!