the Onda

Steve Gillmor has a beautiful essay on the significance of Twitter which is well worth the read. In it, he explains the perfect storm situation that gave birth to the incredible success Twitter is experiencing. In his own words:

The key to this signalling network is the duality of Twitter posts - both personal and public in equal doses. Personal data such as what I'm reading or listening to conspire with public data such as what news is important to us and what news isn't to cut through the glut with surprising efficiency. Each of us has to perform an instant editorial calculation of the relative value of the data as divided by the nature of the cloud of followers into which the post is injected. Overlapping circles of influence and authority resonate like a pebble tossed in a smooth pond.

What results is an elastic and supple map of how to transit the information space, contoured by the relative effectiveness of the editorial agenda of each poster and its success at attracting the right audience. Just as the 140 character "limit" promotes clarity and focus, the decision to follow is not taken lightly for fear of upsetting the value of the aggregate flow by having it accelerate beyond the ability to absorb it. Each node must traverse a high wire between value and noise.

I've been looking at Twitter for the last two years trying to figure out why it is that despite its paltry featureset and it's extremely unreliable uptime there seems to be a core of something there that makes it more with "the grain of the (social) web" than anything else that's come along in the last 5 years. And it's great to see Steve nail it in his post (especially because so many other pundits have tried to feel this particular elephant in the dark to no avail).

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