Tim O'Reilly at the 140 Character Conference

I want to see who else was at this conference, but I just watched a talk given by Tim O'Reilly at the conference and wanted to blog about some of the highlites here, as well as reflect a bit on what he said. I have embedded the video below for anyone to watch if they wish. First the tag line for the conference was "Exploring the Disruptive Nature of Twitter 140 Characters At a Time." It made me think of the book I am going to read after I finish The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (Wired MAgazine. Editor in Chief). That book is titled Disrupting Class and it is by Clayton Christensen. It is about disruptive innovation and how it effecting how people learn. I would say Twitter definitely fits into this "disruptive innovation" class. One has to look no further than the Iranian Election protests to see this.

Anyway, Tim O'Reilly said the following: He said Twitter had been summed up by someone as "Ambient Intimacy" or news from your close friends, but it is news that matters. He said you could look at what is happening in Iran to see how one person there Twittering can have impact on an international scale. I see this, and can see this through other social media such as YouTube. One person caught the horrific images of young Iranian girl, Neda Agha Soltan, being murdered on Saturday. Those images have had international impact. Barrack Obama has even said he has seen them, and he has now made his harshest comments to date regarding the activities in Iran. Did the video of Neda being murdered prod him to harsher words? I don't know for sure, but you could see how this could happen, thereby providing an example of the power of social media and technology.

Back to Tim O'Reilly's remarks. He said that being in the media is about serving a community; not making money or being widely read. Don't go for the audience first. Serve a community. He said we should be asking ourselves this question "How can I add value to the community that I am a part of?"

He gave some insight into his Twittering process. He said he Retweets (RT) alot, and it is not always a Tweet that he Retweets. Sometimes he Retweets emails, etc. He says he built a team of people he follows and promotes them through his stream. He said he acts as a point guard and distributes content. He said that he used to tweet 30 times a day and realized that was too much, and that he needed a filter. So now he types his tweets in a text document for later posting, then he filters them and posts what he feels are the best.

He said that there is a nervous system that extends from the center of government out to each of us. Our role is to be active synapses in that nervous systems. Congressmen and women are Tweeting. We can now follow them and engage in conversation with them.

He closed with the following statement, "Create value for a community and eventually that community will create value for you."