Twitter has the Power to Change the World

Twitter has the power to change how the world works in relation to the transmission of news and events that affect our lives.

Take the story over Amazon's removal of books concerning gays and lesbians. This was put onto Twitter and a hacker claimed responsibility. It was a lie, the hacker was not responsible, but in a matter of minutes and hours, as many people believed it to be true, as if it had been written in a major newspaper.

Okay the Amazon story didn't affect all of our lives, it didn't affect my life. But it was a big deal to millions of people, and there is a correlation between the volume of people affected by or who cared about the story, and the people who spread stories on Twitter.

Though each post in Twitter is only 140 characters long (160 if you cheat by turning JS off), Twitter is still the most powerful form of social media I have ever seen. I think it is because the popular stories are passed around so quickly.

On other social media sites where content is voted for, it can take hours or even days for a link to go popular. Then on the front page it will be visited more and the story will grow and be seen by more people. But this can happen on Twitter in a matter of minutes to an hour tops.

I think it is because of Twitter allowing people to develops its array of apps, as Twitter has grown so rapidly, creating a cool app or spin off site is a source of acclaim, and the number of apps and cool sites has grown just as quickly.

Desktop apps like Tweetdeck (my preference), which allow you to keep Twitter constantly running, and to segregate the people you follow into groups, so you can be alerted when your favourite groups Tweet.

This means that stories are seen the minute they are posted, and if they are liked they are immediately spread from one person to another, as they spread they are picked up by aggregators of popular content and spread further.

This is why popular stories spread and become so popular on Twitter, and why it is the most powerful form of social media. I say Twitter can change the world, because it has so much power already, when it only has a small amount of the users that giant Facebook has.

At the speed it is growing that won't be true for long, so Twitter can only become more powerful, possibly powerful enough to change the way news travels around the world in a profound and lasting way.