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There may also be a middle path. I see personal, social, and public uses or modes for twitter, especially now that it has mainstreamed (somewhat) and that there is a mass media use case for twitter.
In my thinking
--The personal (right hand?) use is closer, more IM/chat like, and serves the purpose of keeping in close touch...
--The social is how many of us used and still use twitter: an extended family of people, events, posts, but also having social status and involving some public social behaviors (being seen)
--The public use case makes or uses twitter as a broadcast/distribution system, and tweeting is tweeting in front of a public
To Marshall's original question, which resonates with several conversations I've had this week (and blogged) about social tools and who knows their users and uses best: do we think twitter can even control its use cases going forward? Third party apps, and feed aggregators, will continue to impact the service, its utility, and socialities, profoundly. In my experience, clients like tweetdeck and seesmic have completely changed how I use twitter, and have made it possible for me to follow a lot of folks but still attend to conversations with people I know well.
I'm inclined to argue for self-regulation. Or to claim that there's no governance possible with a tool that, like twitter, is not really a tool but is a community and public, also. Philosophically, however, it seems to me that there's no way that a distributed, interdependent, interconnected communication utility (insofar as tweets are piped through aggregators, widgets, into social nets, etc) like twitter can be governed or regulated. From a system perspective. Let alone from a social perspective (regulation of behaviors and practices, which would work only if twitter's users were a normatively compliant bunch)...
Seems to me that twitter will always be running behind its own community of users, and behind use cases, applications, and twitter extensions brought to market by third parties.
All of which, to me, raises a question that's popped up a few times this year: in social media design, might there be an agile development approach that also anticipates future social needs and use cases? To wit, designing tools as one might design a town -- starting with a few buildings and streets and adding over time as population requires. Social software designed by social blueprint, rolled out over time...
I had to learn early to scan quickly and effectively because I grew up with Usenet News and email lists, both of which require honing your scanning ability.
I do believe you dip into the stream, but that's the nature of the beast - you do not connect to Twitter 24/7, so you are a priori dipping into the stream all the time.
There are people I follow closely and others I scan occasionally, that works for me.
If Twitter wants to continue to be successful, it will need to take into account various (sometimes radical) usage models or it will alienate some portion of its client base - if that's what they want they can do that.
I believe Twitter should use Twitter as its governance mechanism - perhaps polling/voting (although I see issues with this for various reasons), perhaps a publish-only Twitter address that everyone automatically follows when they join that distributes Twitter news and future path.
Have fun! - Bob
Still the world is wondrous large, -- seven seas from marge to marge, --
And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;
And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu,
And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.
Here's my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose
And the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-night: --
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And -- every -- single -- one -- of -- them -- is -- right!
Meanwhile, has anyone created a mirror database?
Stowe, I think ultimately it's gong to be resolved by the "committed users" of which I am one, cutting our losses and starting over in a world with many twitters operating on the open internet, instead of behind the twitter.com wall. The way they've set it up, it has to go that way. They could have avoided it by voluntarily decoupling their service from name resolution, becoming the Verisign of twit-space, which would have been enormously profitable and would have made it unnecessary for them to hire a community of philosophers (which they haven't done). That's the only way they could stay on top of what's going on in twitterland. And they're completely not doing that at this time, they're not even getting a taste of what's going on.
@jack's statement at NYU this week about wanting Twitter to literally turn into a public utility shows a serious lack of thinking through the implications on governance and revenue sharing with the citizenry just for starters.
I wish Twitter all the best and thank them for what they've catalyzed, but there are some telltale signs of cluelessness that are becoming harder to ignore, as pointed out in the post and other comments. In any case they are playing it too close to the vest for a company with open-this-and-that aspirations. Is it my cynicism kicking in?
You're not "hardcore" users, you're not "committed" users, you're not "long-term" or "loyal" users. You're just that small, annoying group of people every community has, who decide their way of using it is objectively right, and no one else gets it.
It turns out that the left hand minority are involved in 90% of what takes place on Twitter. The majoritarians visit less frequently, connect less, and attract fewer people to join.
The reason I feel the need to differentiate is that this sense of entitlement for media that has become so prevalent in our culture, of deserving everything for FREE whenever they want it, is KILLING those of us who depend on revenue from such things to make a living. We aren't trying to be rich, we just want to keep the lights on. So please do not draw such analogies, and please please please do not perpetuate a sad perception that people don't need to pay for their music. The ones who created and spent their time and money producing whatever it is the public wants should be the ones who determine whether or not it is free.
You could also experience Twitter statically. You could just read what goes by, never RT or @reply.
The folks that produce art should have a say -- a big say -- in what happens to it. But our culture also belongs to us, and artists, production companies, movie studios, and others who 'own' cultural artifacts -- because modern theories of ownership allow it -- cut against the grain of human nature.