On Twitter’s Value for Non-Tweeters
Blogger Robleh Ali has some interesting thoughts on how #votereport changed his thinking about the usefulness of Twitter:
I’m torn on the value of Twitter. For a long time I have thought it largely useless because I don’t know anyone who uses it and dismissed it as a phenomenon of the tech blogosphere echo chamber. However as with Flickr I have started to see the value of it now I can see it presented in a way I actually find useful.
…
What changed my mind was Twitter Vote Report. This service gives a realtime update of useful information such as wait times on election day. Combined with Plodt this gives a stream of valuable realtime information that could not come from anywhere else. It does not matter that most people aren’t Twitter users - there are enough of them to continuously monitor what is happening and with the right tools that info can be turned into something valuable to non-Twitter users like me.
Worth a read, as it raises an interesting question. Is there some magical critical mass of reports that TVR needs to reach to be useful? Certainly, some visualization don’t work nearly as well with only a few data points. But given the way Twitter encourages users to pick up and amplify information, Robleh suggests that even a few solid reports can have big impact.
Leave a comment