Twitter is one of the things that never caught on for me. My friends and colleagues rave about it. Most of my old college mates send out enough tweets a month to fill up the stratosphere twice. For me, it is just another one of those "things that I'll learn someday as soon as I get the time". Oddly enough, much of that "time" of mine is taken by Youtube and Unreal Tournament so I usually don't have much left over for learning how to use this tiny marvel. And i never learned it because I just did not see why hundreds of people would like to know that i am stuck at the airport or that my doctor told me i had pneumonia. Most of my friends wouldn't care if a vampire from Dracula's garden drew a stake through my leg. The chance of them giving a damn about a honeybee biting me is about as remote as a penguin at the north pole.
Now before all you tweeters start pelting virtual stones at me (yes i think facebook will add that option soon, after all the virtual farmland and office space is taken up) let me be the first to state that twitter is one amazing piece of software. In a world where hundreds of new social networking sites are opening up everyday in every college dorm from Istanbul to Antarctica, twitter was the one that actually offered something very different and interesting. Ever heard of micro-finance, the concept that took the savings and loan industry by storm? This revolutionary technique is growing rapidly today and is an area of immense interest to many of the financial elite. Twitter took the social networking craze and applied the 'micro' factor to it. This is an oversimplification but it conveys the general idea. A lot of busy people who did not have time for blogs could now send out tweets. This is not to imply that those of us who do have time for blogs are colossal nerds and couch potatoes. We just sleep less at night :) Coming back, tweeting only takes seconds and you needn't spend hours thinking about what to write. No proofreading (unless your English skills are about as good as a blue whale's). Just speak your mind. This concept allowed millions of people to get online and get an identity. Twitter tapped a previously untapped market - people looking for an outlet but who didn't have time for blogs or podcasts. Instead of taking a lot of words from a few, it takes a few from a lot of people and now it has millions of users (hold on, is it billions now? After all, its been 10 minutes since i started writing this..)
It is interesting to note how a small idea can snowball into a worldwide revolution. Did all worldwide revolutions spring from small but obvious ideas? What about the steam engine, the single machine that was responsible for starting more than 2 centuries of industrial development? Or the transistor, that will be responsible for 2 or more centuries of an information age? What is the next small idea that will lead the world on another revolution? Will it come after the world ends on 21st Dec 2012 as most controversy theorists and self-proclaimed prophets would love to believe? Well we'll find out on 22nd of that month (at least those of us who wont go into caves by then). Until then, i guess its time for me to join the bandwagon. Its time to start learning how to tweet. I'll catch up with Earth soon.
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