…words

Bill Whittle and Austin Bay have a discussion about how Twitter can be used to network and communicate in ways far beyond “what am I having for lunch”: The Strategic Implications of Social Media (link to the video, 12 minutes).

Here is part of a post with some background info:

“Iran’s Information Age demonstrators, exploiting the capabilities of the social networking and “micro-blogging” service Twitter, surprised then threatened Iran’s tyrannical mullahs. Tehran’s thugs in robes suddenly discovered they could not control information within Iran. Kicking out BBC reporters used to separate dissidents from the global megaphone, but no longer. Now that mobile phones are essentially small computers, instant Internet access is widely distributed. Men, women and children hold a global link with audio- and video-recording capability in their palm.

Twitter is the latest in a line of “social media” phenomena spawned by the digital communications revolution. Social media like Facebook and MySpace connected users on the Internet. Twitter, which specializes in brief “text messages,” bills itself as a service that answers the question, “What are you doing?” That message is shared with a group of friends or the world.

“Tweeting” Iranians let the world know they were launching street demonstrations and seeding an anti-regime rebellion. “