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Life In The Twitter Village

December 1st, 2008 by AV Flox in Twitter

“When the earthquake July 29th, occurred in L.A., it was on Twitter in about 20 seconds,” says Laura Fitton. “It was on the AP in nine to 11 minutes.”

Fitton, head of Pistachio Consulting and author of Twitter for Dummies was on The Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Jane Norris talking about Twitter this morning.

“I have seen first hand what this can do for people’s lives and what kind of value it can build and I’m a huge fan,” Fitton told listeners after clarifying she’s in no way affiliated with Twitter.

“The thing that’s most worthwhile is to step back and kind of forget that it’s a publishing environment,” she said. “People talk about it being microblogging and, you know, OK, we’re just pushing stuff out there–we’re really having a conversation and what it amounts to is a massive, massive flow of information between all these overlapping networks of loosely connected people all over the globe. And so there is tons of news flowing in there all the time, there’s tons of consumer data, here is tons personality, friends being made, there’s relationships being struck up.”

Fitton has always talked about Twitter as a village. Early this year, she developed the notion on her blog:

For me, connecting on Twitter with someone I’ve just met in person is inviting them to live in “my village.” Follow-up won’t be limited to the “nice meeting you” email cul-de-sac. On Twitter, we’ll cross paths incidentally and without pressure. I may bump into them “around town” for maybe a word or two at the “coffee shop” or “post office.” Over time we may discover common interests (aka social objects) in each others’ tweets, and connect more deeply as neighbors or friends.

For a contrived, weird and techy way to communicate, Twitter’s “passive conversation” fosters very natural, gradual relationship-building. I explained about the village to Dan Bricklin, who immediately connected it to the chapter on “taming” and the Fox in The Little Prince.

“You go back to sociological research on what’s called reciprocity,” Fitton told listeners of Federal News Radio today. “Even all the way back to the 70s–reciprocity is someone’s willingness to engage and help someone else. If you just had a little casual contact with someone, you’re much more likely to step up and engage with them. So we’re all having all this casual contact, constantly on Twitter and it’s really making people engage. And we saw people engage last week during the horror in Mumbai. People really were stepping up trying to help, spreading words, doing what they could–it’s an amazing environment.”

Yet many people still wonder about the usefulness of Twitter. Those of us who have been doing it for a while grasp the immediacy of news, the wealth of consumer data, the vast reach of information, and, above all, the power of connection. I have met more amazing people on Twitter than I have at any other place or through any other thing. But Fitton is right–to go from a ridiculous to amazing, it takes a village, “a critical mass of interesting people–to read and write to.”

“When my brain started to connect with the brains (and hearts) of others, it got really, REALLY cool for me,” Fitton writes on her blog. “You may be looking for like minds, or you may want to be totally shaken up by new ideas. Both work. One day I suddenly realized this was, for me, tribe-finding. For arguably the first time in my life I didn’t feel as weird and different.”

Image of Laura Fitton used with permission. Copyright @wmmarc 2008.

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