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| Tweeting in birds is to attract attention - and food.... |
It is hard to believe but only a month ago I started to embark upon the roller-coaster ride of learning Twitter, how it works and how people play the game. It has been an incredibly momentous period, with huge world events occurring in tandem, my learning curve including different aspects of how this phenomenon works and otherwise feeding an obsession to follow the Hackgate soap opera. The appalling events in Norway unfolded before my disbelieving eyes once I had spotted the first notice of trouble on the Reuters website, right down to a first tweet on the shootings. To follow that on the same day with the news of losing a very talented musician who had suffered so much pain and be prompted by myriad users to a very fine piece of writing that was strong, compassionate and understood terribly well how these things happen was truly unexpected. I am purposely not naming names here, those names are not why I am writing this blog.
Twitter is so young. It was born in 2006 and took a few days of hatching before it was given such a profoundly apt name, apparently intended as much as anything else to reflect the success of Flickr (I must be one of the very few who are concerned about Flickr but that is different stuff). A collaborative effort following on from brainstorming, with development and input from users and non-users, software developers etc, it has grown into a global presence, sometimes being given credit for more influence than is quite true. Having done a lot of tour-leading and group escorting I know a lot about group dynamics, the nature of the group is frequently at odds with the individuals that make it up, a disconcerting truth that impacts on behaviour patterns. This appears to be something that happens with Twitter as well and is plausibly part of its addictive power.
