It was built entirely out of 140-character messages, but the sum total of those tweets added up to something truly substantive, like a suspension bridge made of pebbles (Johnson, 2009). This is a quote from this week’s lecture from ‘How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live‘ and it’s something I have been reflecting on this week.
One tweet about what your friend had for breakfast probably won’t cause too much commotion on the web. But through the use of hashtags, the tweets become valuable because they’re aggregated and this creates a dynamic story. Twitter is now being used as an alert system in Emergencies to make people aware of danger earlier. This is successful because increasingly, the stories that come across our radar will arrive via the passed links of the people we follow. Twitter is a more efficient supplier of the super-fresh Web than Google (Johnson, 2009).
Tweets are pebbles and the more tweets (pebbles) that are added to the conversations, the more value in the content is created. It is the aggregated flow of each tweet that makes the contribution. And in the end, all the pebbles add up to a bridge.
REFERENCE:
Johnson, S. (2009). How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live. TimeFile
Pittman, E. (2013). Twitter Launches an Alert System for Emergencies. [online] Govtech.com. Available at: http://www.govtech.com/em/disaster/Twitter-Alert-System-Emergencies.html [Accessed 16 Sep. 2018].
ray of sunshine 
Hey Rachel!
I really liked the metaphor this week of tweets being a bridge made of pebbles and so I really enjoyed your blog post, particularly the point you bring up about twitter being used in emergencies now. We may see twitter as just another social media platform but the fact is, Twitter has been useful in so many emergency situations and is increasing it’s usefulness by working with NGOs to better understand how Twitter can be a tool in their efforts of humanitarian rescue work.
You talked about how your friends’ breakfast tweet won’t cause too much commotion on the web, which reminded me of another line from Steven Johnson’s ‘How Twitter Will Change The Way We Live’: ‘In a few seconds you find out that your nephew got into med school and Shaquille O’Neal just finished a cardio workout in Phoenix.’ I enjoyed this idea because it made me reflect on the way we live our lives now, that we connect with people that don’t even know of our existence.
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Hey Rachel! I think the “bridge made of pebbles” is a good way to describe the curated value individuals add from anything they engage with. You’re totally right in which you stated how the information becomes valuable when “they’re aggregated” which further “creates a dynamic story”. The hyperlink about twitter becoming an alert system was intriguing for me to read and shows the dynamics and transition the internet has become as we can get news instantaneously now without having to wait for the news on TV or through newspapers. Good read! Keep it up 🙂
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