Tweeters at a Revolution

From the streets of Tunis to the marble halls of the Vatican, more buzz has visited Twitter, if possible, in recent weeks than in its already-over-hyped four years of life in cyberspace. Along with social media brethren Facebook and YouTube, it has been credited with fanning the flames of the Jasmine Revolution and was even blessed by Pope Benedict XVI who pontificated – in more than 140 characters – that Christians should use social media for the “development of new and more complex intellectual and spiritual horizons, new forms of shared awareness.”

With all this positive buzz, it seems Twitter is finding its calling. But really it’s just returning to its roots. In America, we see the social network as a playground for ego-fueled self-promoters (see @kanyewest or the dearly-departed @johncmayer account) and little more than a low-cal snack pack medium: fun and forgettable with measly mental nourishment.

Twitter’s original purpose, however, was more focused on the “social” in social media. Co-creator Jack Dorsey (@jack) developed it as a way to communicate efficiently with groups – to say that the club downtown was going-off, for example – in an expedient matter; just type it into your phone, hit send, and forget it. While that seems like a fittingly-innocuous origin story for a inherently-limited medium, it also portended Twitter’s potential.

In an Arab world ignited, Twitter has been a powerful means of rallying the troops. It’s immediate, it can be sent to any old cell phone, and it’s a simple process unencumbered by privacy settings and news feeds. It also offers a bit more anonymity than Facebook. In fact, Twitter was blocked before its big cousin in Egypt. Not to say Facebook has not proven useful in gathering and motivating but Twitter has a “now-ness” that smacks of revolution.

So as we admire Twitter in its rawest, “pure” form, we should appreciate that, in a free society, we can be free to tweet and retweet what we had for dinner or our cleverest #lessambitiousmovies title while also religiously checking @CNN and @nytimes for the latest news from #egypt.