Krishwords

Earlier this week, Allen Stern of Centernetworks called Twitter a publicity network, along with other social networks like facebook. He argued that a platform like twitter can be used by a smart marketer to publicize their product/service. He quoted Mashable as a perfect example for using twitter as a publicity network. I definitely agree with him on how these platforms can be used (gamed, if you are an anti-marketer person) for publicity purposes. But, his post got me thinking about the nature of twitter platform as such. Is it an instant messenger or is it an IRC kinda chat client or is it a social network or is it a publicity network, etc.

I picked on Twitter because it is one of the most open platform with open APIs. I use it extensively and my company, back in India, also use twitter for its business purposes. Dave Winer has used its open API to build Twittergram for audio and photos. In fact, Marshall Kirkpatrick recently wrote a great post about how twitter is paying his rent. Robert Scoble uses twitter extensively with more than 6500 ‘friends’. Like Google, Twitter is fast becoming a verb.

The popularity of twitter also brings up the question about the real nature of twitter. I do agree that different people see it from different angles and consider it as social network, chat platform, publicity network, etc. I see it from a totally different perspective. I see twitter as a modern day Agora. Let me discuss this comparison further.

Agora, which means a gathering place, is the commercial center cum public square in the Ancient Greek city of Athens. At Agora, people got together to do business and also to discuss topics ranging from business, politics, philosophy, etc. People debated to satisfy their intellectual queries, they discussed about various aspects of business, they formed business relationships, they discussed about current events, they discussed about the nature of universe, etc.. The great Greek philosopher, Socrates, used to stand in the Agora and discuss his philosophy with those people who were willing to listen to him. Essentially, Agora was a platform to exchange knowledge, conduct business, make announcements, etc. Like Agora, twitter also serves as a platform where people can engage in a one to one or one to many conversations with others who are willing to listen. Such conversations can lead to sharing of knowledge, business transactions, discussion about a current event, announcements about products or services, discussion about the nature of the tech universe, etc. Twitter offers a platform where people of different background, ethnicity, gender, etc. come together. Some people use it to debate on controversial topics, some people use it to promote their product/service, some people share their knowledge with others, some people even announce their personal stuff (like Scoble, about Milan’s birth), etc. Sometimes it is one to one and, at other times, it is one to many conversations. There are times when people just twitter and assume that others are reading their tweets. We have modern day socrates’ (Dave Winer, Huh!!) discussing about the direction Facebook or Google should take. We have politicians updating about their campaign statuses, etc. Whatever is happening on the twitter platform is no different from what happened in the Agora of Ancient Greece. I tend to think of Twitter as a modern day Agora.

If we consider the nature of twitter to be that of Agora, all the other characterizations of twitter, like social network, publicity network, chat, etc., will just be a subset of this universal description, of twitter as the modern day Agora.

PS: Some people might get tempted to compare the entire blogosphere with Agora but I would disagree with such a characterization. Agora is a small gathering place in a city. Blogosphere is too vast and it is not a single “location” to fall into the description as an Agora. But twitter is a single “ location” where different people come together to converse.

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