Twitter has is surprised that we complain about Twitter’s failures when it’s free. However it might appear that powerful competitors offering free services will benefit from Twitter’s problems. SecondBrain. Here you can store all the online properties that are important to you and your contacts can check them out too. That name SecondBrain suggests all sorts of possibilities in terms of improved thinking.
However when it comes to brainstorming, I think Twitter in all its simplicity beats the complexities of SecondBrain. A little reflection on this will show why.
Why does Twitter work?
JD Rucker has an interesting post on Lorne Feldman Is Wrong About Twitter. In a video included in the post, the only point that Feldman seems to make is that if you appreciate the instant feedback from Twitter, it probably means you’re a loser. Without realizing it, I believe that Feldman has focused on the one most important strength of Twitter - instant feedbackYour TwitterSphere Can Be Your Extended Brain
Perhaps Twitter can act as your central nervous system on the Internet. If you have a few hundred people following you on Twitter, then it can act almost like your subconscious. You may only check it a few times a day. Perhaps those few hundred people also check it only a few times a day. But at any moment you may be able to contact randomly a handful of people from your network. So if you’re trying to think of new solutions, check with your subconscious. If it’s important, you could ask the same question half a dozen times at fifteen minute intervals.
A Small Example Of Twitter Brainstorming
A small example yesterday confirmed the efficacy of this approach. I was doing research for a blog post on Website Mini-Reviews. My question on Twitter produced a most useful response from follow on Twitter. He suggested a new line of thought that I had completely overlooked. This new thought triggered in my TwitterSphere seems so analogous to the way a new thought may be fired in your brain’s synaptic circuits. That is why the notion of Twitter as an extended (and subconscious) brain seems a very useful concept.
Whither Twitter?
Presumably Twitter will put behind it this horrendous period of inferior service and emerge strengthened. Its competitors have been given a real opportunity for a period. We also now have Comments
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