Twitter, a Fad of the Internet Age

February 7, 2010 by TwitterFreak · Leave a Comment

I used to see one of the latest online fads, Twitter, as a super time waster. I didn’t see any reason for it so it looked like a bunch of kids sharing useless and private information like bathroom trips and nose pickings. Now I see it as an extension of an older hobby, CB or ham radio. They both trapped nerdy kids into an isolated world they could be alone in. But both were a complex social network which proved to be beneficial to society.

While I’m not old enough to remember, the ham radio fad helped in both world wars and with people in a disaster situation.

My understanding is that every block had someone who monitored the CB for cutting news of the red invasion from Russia and twisters or hurricanes. Any well equipped bomb shelter or basement had a ham radio. Even if no one knew what to do with it, it was there.

Move forward a few decades when a natural disaster hit Southern California in 2008. I saw another side of Twitter. I noticed that many web sites about the fires referred to Twitter postings. So I started looking into it.

What I saw blew me away. People were using Twitter to plot escape routes and keep track of where the fire front currently was. I can only guess how many lives were saved by this “useless” fad. Another Internet fad was being used in ways I never thought of. Mashups of Google maps (a mixture of locations) were being used by the authorities to show the latest locations and statistics. Another marked the locations of refugee camps.

Then I noticed another use for Twitter. While not life saving, it was useful none the less. I went to a programmers convention in LA and was expecting the chaos these conventions brought 30 years ago.

However, the convention was less chaotic and people knew where to go and what to do because so many of the attendees were Twittering about last minute changes, which sessions were good, and where to eat lunch. The registration desk was less of a bottle neck since fewer people had a reason to hang around it.

Grandparents are another possible audience. Wouldn’t many grandparents enjoy being able to keep track of their darlings life?

added: 5-5-2009

Yet another beneficial use I’ve seen for Twitter was when vandals or terrorists took a hack saw to AT&T’s backbone. Not only did several server farms go done, but the phone service in the area did too. So AT&T communicated with their customers with Twitter. Ignoring the irony temporarily, once again Twitter proved itself to be a good media for humans with unusual needs like the one where ATT was victimized by either vandals or terrorists. If ATT didn’t respond and left their customers hanging in the wind, it would have been a PR nightmare for them.

I still don’t see Twitter’s value for marketting a service, but if it exists I will learn.

Now I see Twitter as practical in some situations and a virtual life-saver in others. Of course some people take it too far and do end up wasting time. But isn’t that a definition of a hobby?

Dave Keays is an independent web programmer specializing in Drupal and the security of Drupal.