Monday 12 April 2010

Twitter is dead; Twitter is surprising alive

My Twitter is dead presentation for #pelc10 has had thousands of hits already. I'm guessing it's down to word of Twitter and the amazing snowball effects of RTs from network to network.

All this surely contradicts my argument that Twitter, if not actually dead, is limping awkwardly towards an uncertain future in HE?

I can't help but contrast its extraordinary vibrancy in some spheres - think Trafigura or, closer to home, the success of Twitter enabled backchannels at conferences - with its relative flatness in HE for undergraduate teaching and learning.

Can technologies - and the extra they bring users in one sphere - transfer from one context to another? I used to think so but am now not so sure. Twitter is a great technology - my personal favourite - but it struggles against what I think is a technology cultures of undergraduates who see it as a broadcast tool to subscribe to celebrities.

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