You need to use social services to understand them

I don’t know if Malcolm Gladwell is right when he claims “the revolution will not be tweeted,” but I can say with certainty that the Twitter he describes is not the Twitter I know. Gladwell’s central argument is that Twitter creates weak ties but social movements require strong ties. I’ve made more strong ties through Twitter (and blogging) than I have through any communications medium I’ve ever used before. The relationships start off weak – a retweet, @ reply, or blog comment – but often strengthen through further discussions and eventually become new friendships and business relationships.

I can see why Gladwell gets this wrong – he doesn’t seem to really use Twitter (he does blog occasionally). I barely tweeted or blogged for a long time too. I read blogs basically since their advent, but social services are fundamentally participatory: reading blogs/tweets is to social services as watching TV is to a real life conversations. I finally relented at the insistence of Caterina, who had the foresight to insist that everyone at Hunch blog, tweet, contribute to open source projects, etc. I now get some of my best ideas from responses to tweets and blog posts, and have developed dozens of strong relationships through the experience.

I made some jokes on Twitter the past few days about Kleiner Perkins’ new social fund. These were meant to be lighthearted: I only know one person at KP and from everything I’ve seen they seem to be smart, friendly people. But underneath the jokes lies a real issue: the partners there don’t seem to really participate in social services (something they only underscored by announcing their new fund at a press conference that targeted traditional media outlets).

I’d love to engage in a debate with smart people like Gladwell about the impact of the social web on culture, politics, activism and so on. I also think it’s great to see savvy investors like KP allocate significant resources to the next wave of social web innovation. But it’s hard for me to take them seriously when they don’t seem to take their subject matter seriously.

Usama

Socialism pays off as well keeps you energized. Social media is the new media. Lets embrace it.
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Android 300,000

I’m just waiting for Google to buy Twitter already!
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http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=536295177 Skot Nelson

The basic premise of your argument–that Gladwell can’t criticize twitter because he’s not used it–is false. It’s akin to suggesting that a film critic’s writings aren’t valid if they haven’t made a film themselves.

The fact that he hasn’t used the medium may skew your perspective on his criticism, and is certainly something worth knowing but it does not in and of itself invalidate the criticism.

We increasingly live in a society where criticism is regarded as inherently negative and often inherently cynical in nature. It worried me.

http://www.cdixon.org chris dixon

No it’s akin to saying a film critic shouldn’t review a film without *seeing* the film.

http://bottomlinelawgroup.com/ Antone Johnson

Completely agree, Chris. I’d be curious to know what the ratio of active tweeters to followers is. Fundamentally, Twitter is a broadcast medium. It’s impossible to grasp what’s being broadcast — and evaluate or criticize it — with the “radio” turned off.

http://bottomlinelawgroup.com/ Antone Johnson

Interesting observation about KPCB. They could be lurkers, doing attentive listening with minimal chatter, but I’d argue that still isn’t as good as doing both. Following the film critic analogy, anyone can criticize a film by watching it, but one who’s gone to film school and/or actually worked in the medium — even if it’s just making short student films — is likely to have a more fully developed perspective as an audience member. (Even among professionals, how many Academy members really understand sound effects editing well enough to cast an informed vote for that Oscar?)

The perception is out there, at least among the younger generation of social Web entrepreneurs, that KPCB isn’t the first name that comes to mind for funding social media startups. See this question on Quora, which puts Kleiner on the defensive: http://qr.ae/FgWB . Adam Rifkin’s answer is particularly telling: “I find it fascinating that KPCB did not invest in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pandora, WordPress, AdMob, Yelp, Quora, Tumblr, Foursquare, or Groupon.” (Add MySpace as well; Redpoint got that one.) In my view, that perception is as important as the reality.
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Chris Dixon