Check out this article, “Autistic Social Software” by danah boyd. I think this is a really interesting analysis of computer mediated human-to-human interaction. I’ve discussed this article with a few people, and most of them have said things like “oh, well I only use social networking sites to connect with people I already know” or “I’ve met some awesome people on the internet”, but I think that’s missing the point of the article. It’s not about the ends, but it’s more of an analysis of the means. A poignant analysis at that.

Anyways.

It got me thinking. Twitter is blowing up — it’s all the rage in social networking right now. It’s on the news, people talk about it on tv. Even my most computer illiterate friends have twitter accounts, though they rarely, if ever, tweet. The thing about Twitter, that separates it from sites like Facebok, MySpace, and Friendster, is that it doesn’t have a concept of friendship. It has more of a passive relationship: “following”. It sets up a given person as a leader and lets them broadcast their most insignificant details to their group of followers. So what’s a real life analogy for twitter? Maybe a religious cult? A reality tv show? Any situation where a number of people constantly consume the information that is imposed on them, with little means to engage in the content. Twitter doesn’t have threads where a particular tweet can be turned into a dialogue. And @ replies are quickly lost in the constant barrage of tweets (unless of course you’re following less than a handful of people). Maybe this is why politician’s were (relatively speaking) early adopters of Twitter. It’s a great way for them to disseminate information, without worrying about a backlash?

No conclusions here. Just something I’ve been thinking about.