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Malcolm Gladwell is Still Right about Twitter Failing the Social Revolution

In my October 19, 2010 article — Malcolm Gladwell Crushes the Social Network Revolution — I argued this:

I’ve always been fascinated by the people on Twitter who have 25,000 followers and they’re following 25,000 people. We all know nobody is reading Tweets from 25,000 people a day and, in reverse, nobody is reading what you broadcast to 25,000 people. So the point becomes: So What? Everybody’s Tweeting, Nobody’s reading. That’s the definition of a modern, circular, death with no end except to begin again. We all assume everyone is reading every tidbit we share, but they aren’t — and yet they assume the same about us, and that we cannot live without their every savory update morsel, but we can; and so the fakery and the terribleness of Social Networking is known and felt but never confessed. We all just keep our heads down and keep clicking and pretending we are living memeingful lives while we search for a human reality that never was and never can be.

Malcolm Gladwell was right then, as he is now. The Revolution in Egypt will be won with bloody, civilian, hands on tanks and not pristine fingers pecking on cellphones.

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The Deepwater Word vs. The Microblogging Shallows

Technorati recently gave their take on the state of blogging with lots of numbers and percentages — and I would really love to know who these people are who are responding to their questions.  Does Technorati know the identities of their responders, or are these people only blindly self-reporting?  I never flatly trust any number reported in a poll or a pie chart.  I always subtract half the time people say they actually spend on “doing something” — including blogging! — and I always subtract at least 66% from any salary number people claim to earn.

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Quantifying @bolesblogs Twinterest

I hate take taking the time trying new things and coming away from the experience with a “So What?” reaction.  Yesterday, I tripped on gravity and clicked on Twinterest and, five minutes later, I left with a “So What?” in hand a bunch of meaningless screenshots in my pocket.

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Malcolm Gladwell Crushes the Social Network Revolution

In a thoughtful article published in the October 4, 2010 issue of The New Yorker magazine, SuperGenius author Malcolm Gladwell posits the argument the next human revolution will not be via social networks like Twitter and Facebook because those modern day feebles rely on “weak-tie” agreements instead of the in-person, militaristic “strong-tie” actions of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s.

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Shit My Dad Says: But Did Sam Halpern Say it or Not?

When people ask me the point of  Twitter, I have often pointed to the Twitter stream created by Justin Halpern in which he posts things that his father has said, verbatim.

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The End of Blogging

We all knew this day would come:  The everyday Blogger is dead; and we are the haunted, but rectifying, ghosts of what used to be and what has never been.  Our deaths begin and end with the elevation of Twitter where everyone suddenly became a publisher — but never a writer — and great thoughts and complex ideas were forever compounded down into 140 character streams of neverending drivel.

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Google Pins Kickbee as Malicious

We are too well aware that much of Twitter’s content is comprised of Blogging the Bodily Fluids Stream — and we know how useless it can be.  Twitter also can be useful when used properly. I am here to tell you that Kickbee is here and is number one in uselessness.  When I tried to visit the Kickbee website, I was met with this warning from Google:

Continue reading → Google Pins Kickbee as Malicious