It’s a way of sending a short message – a “tweet” – of 140 characters for free by SMS, internet or instant messenger, to a group of people (“followers”). It is acutally very simple, an “anti-innovation par excellence,” that allows permanent storing of messages from people one wants to follow. Twitter permits the development of many different free applications which allow, for instance, automatic translation of messages from another language and the sending photos, videos, or music. And it’s a success: it is the same community growing the fastest on the internet: from 2.5 million users in 2007 to more than 10 million today, the core of whom are in the U.S. and some in Japan. They are currently opening between 5,000 and 10,000 accounts per day.
At first, it is used most of all to relate the details of your life or to indicate your presence somewhere, an element representative of the development of global narcissism, where every person wants to relate his or her life to others. This also allows us to direct a question to no one in particular, to report an article, a movie or a song. Eventually, other aspects appeared: Barack Obama was communicating steadily with his 200,000 followers. John McCain used it to denounce the shortcomings of Obama’s recovery plan. The Republican senator McCaskill, said thanks to Twitter she can “speak directly to the people of Missouri during my day without the filter of journalists.” In November 2008, Twitter revealed the Mumbai attacks to followers on the network thanks to tweets sent by witnesses. Twitter users provided the first images of the water landing of the Airbus in the Hudson River in January or the recent fires in Australia. Lance Armstrong’s bicycle, whose theft Armstrong reported last February, on Twitter, was found by one of his followers 48 hours later.
In the fullness of time, it will become much more. First – the most extraordinary survey of the entire planet possible. In listening, reading and following Twitter, we have an increasingly global, integrated and basic mirror on the world, which may soon allow 100 milllion people to converse simultaneously, telegraphically, for free, around-the-clock. But a world increasingly invaded by delusions, for it will be difficult to avoid advertising, spam, lying, and identity theft. It will then become a tremendous means of communication for businesses, who can use the network to alert their clients to new products or sales. Businesses have already started to sell computers and even cars this way. It is finally the media of tomorrow. Much information is available therein. The New York Times, Reuters, and Corriere della Sierra check Twitter nonstop to dig up a scoop. CNN and BBC are already using it to send information flashes to millions of users. Moreover, Twitter circumvents censorship, even while the internet is being monitored: messages sent by mobile phone can no longer be controlled. It is therefore a component of democracy.
At least as long as general surveillance and the collusion of politicians and businesses don’t take hold of it, in the name of security, to bring it down…