Seven years old today
So, Twitter is seven years old today. It now has over 2 million users and people are sending over 400 million tweets each day. Whilst some embrace it, others reject it, and others lampoon it as the preserve of the vacuous. One well-known broadcaster has called on those using it to “stop counting letters and get a life”, and a magazine editor has compared middle-aged men tweeting to “dads dancing at a wedding”. Of course people are free to say whatever they like about Twitter, but aren’t some of these comments missing the point?
Twitter is a medium of communication – nothing more, nor less. Its restrictions of format are no more significant than the the length of, for instance, a magazine editorial or a radio broadcast. As with any use of language the limitations arise from the imagination and discipline of the user, rather than the medium itself. Dismissing Twitter per se is like saying that every short story is nonsense because it is short, and every editorial is forgettable simply because there will be another one along tomorrow.
In the past four years Twitter has allowed me to:
- Co-ordinate a remarkable collaborative publishing project to raise over £2500 for a children’s hospice.
- Compile an interactive map expressing people’s experience of awe around the world.
- Co-ordinate perceptions of prayer across ages from 16 – 80 and across international and denominational borders.
- Interact with those of other faiths on matters of common interest
- Enhance collaboration and communication across both church and business communities in the town where I live.
Twitter is as good, or as bad; as vacuous or as significant as we make it. Time to stop being a Twitter luddite though, I feel, and dismissing it as the invention of the verbal devil.
Image: thehealthybear.com
