Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution: Communication, Connections, and Immediacy—140 Characters at a Time

4 : Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution

The Power of Ambient Awareness

Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com, first learned about

Twitter at the SXSW (South by Southwest) conference in

2007. He right away found it useful for discovering after-

hours parties at the event. But he was surprised when it

turned out to have power in his day-to-day life. “I used

it personally with 20 or 30 friends and saw that it was a

great way to stay in touch,” he says. “For people who are

local, it’s great for meeting up at night. But for my friends

in San Francisco who I see every six months or so, it’s

great for keeping up.”

Many, many people hear about Twitter and think

it sounds frivolous, at best. But then they try it. After

following a few people for a week or two, the ambient

awareness kicks in, and they begin to feel more con-

nected to those people—without having made much

effort. Comments like this are typical:

I didn’t really get Twitter at first and I thought that

it represented all the worst things about blogging

(navel gazing, echo chamber)…. Eventually, I came

around. My family, who are generally far away,

have a much better sense of what is going on in

my life (even though sometimes I forget to call).

—Randy Stewart (comment on

http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter)

I thought Twitter was the stupidest thing I ever

spent time exploring when I first started. (I didn’t

care what people were having ...