Toy? Fad? Time and circumstances will tell.

I was sparked to throw this together after getting a short message from Tom Altman about a tweet he spotted from @mattyoungblut.  Here is the text of the message:

Never really used Twitter for my news until today. Been following the Parkersburg tragedy. Awful.

In case you are not locally tuned in to Iowa news, a storied football coach, mentor and community pillar, Ed Thomas, was murdered this morning in the high school weight room.  Let’s just say it has left the collective community of those who knew him or knew of him utterly stunned.  So, it is basically big news around here today.  Everyone media outlet from here to about a 300 miles radius has descended on the story and, in many cases, the town of Parkersburg, leaving no shortage of coverage outlets.  It is interesting that a relatively new user to Twitter is using it to follow what will probably be one of the dominant stories for the week.  Roll back just a few weeks and remember how Twitter was employed as a information tool inside and outside of Iran.  All the way from the international stage to regional/local news, it seems Twitter has overcome some nay-saying “experts” and their dismissal of it as just a toy or a fad.  It appears possible it might not have been Twitter that needed to grow up, but us as a community of users.

It is eerily similar to the debate that existed in the early 90’s about that silly “www” stuff and commentary about home computers.  Yeah, remember how that stuff has turned out so far?

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp

“But what… is it good for?”
- IBM executive Robert Lloyd, speaking in 1968 about the microprocessor

“I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.”
- Editor in charge of business books, Prentice Hall, 1957

Bringing in part of the electronic herd

Image via Wikipedia

Who today doesn’t find themselves swimming in an ocean of information dotted with established islands reached by only some of the waves of content? We all find ourselves being swamped by the waves of email, websites, RSS feeds, tweets, nugdes, pokes, invites, etc.. My own personal routine involves an overly customized fat-client RSS reader, Facebook, Twhirl, Yammer, Outlook, Blackbird and WordPress (freebie version)…each day, often all day long. If that environment doesn’t make me ADD, nothing will. I’m always on the lookout for ways to aggregate content/information/sources. I’ve enjoyed the convenience of some the Facebook integration. I’ve enjoyed more the ability to take my FeedReader client and ingest all my favorite RSS feeds (news, blogs, etc.) and also add in semantic search feeds from a host of sources to include a custom .osrc file for Twitter that allows me to filter through public Twitter to pull tweets from select people or tweets on defined search parameters. That is quickly becoming one of my vital cowhands in wrangling up the electronic herd.

Today, our team began the work for piping our online news RSS feeds through TwitterFeed to custom-created bots on Twitter. Don’t yell at me…I’m not creating spam engines. Twitter users already know they have to follow somebody to get any tweets, so a person would have to make the choice of following one of the Gazette Communications Twitter bots.

I have to end with a great, but not entirely unrelated quote from our High Priest of Webism, the Earl of Electrons, the Duke of WWW, Mr. Tom Altman, “I get really dumb when the Internet goes down.” Thanks, Tom.