Posturegenics

Early observations on the twitterverse.
In days of old (for the computer age) people would write travelogues or memoirs about the places they visited and what they’ve experienced. I guess twitter is no different, although my butt hasn’t left my chair. (which will be another topic for a posture blog) I still have experienced many connections in my early time on my twitter page; undoubtedly more than I would have if I actually did travel physically from New York to Hawai’i from Sao Paulo to Moldova.
As in any first steps of the first stages in a journey, it’s completely unfamiliar territory. The language, the jargon, the abbreviations, the things the more experienced think is unstated general knowledge, the mechanics of just moving around are all foreign, strange and difficult. It’s like learning Chinese (for all of you who speak Chinese, its like learning English - no offense intended.)
It is surprisingly easy to start moving around and seeing the things that are interesting to others. Being new means making mistakes socially and technically frequently – as it is all so new we are making up the rules of community as we go. Being easy on yourself and others is a good rule to follow in any community. Technical glitches happen. Keep your computer safe with protective tools and keep rolling.
Just like in any community, I find that there are different groups of people and experiences to be found. As I explore my way through tweet verse there are a lot of people just like me new, unsophisticated, excited, curious, moving around and through.
The bigger numbers of people seem to irritate some of the more established denizens of the twverse but for the most part there is a sense of welcoming and teaching the new initiates by the ‘those-who-have-come-this-way-before’. Interestingly, I find that most people want to help and create connections more than they are lamenting the demise of their old familiar club of the cognoscenti. (twitocenti?)
From my vantage point as a novice explorer, I am seeing some trends in how people are using twitter and how they tend to group themselves. So far I’ve noticed:
1. Neophytes: are people who are new and exploring. They don’t have their twitter legs yet. They express lots of excitement and “how do you?” questions.
2. Monetizers: are people who want to help you make a list to grow a presence online for the purpose of making money by creating a profitable enterprise. They sell ways to use social networking for profit. (Nothing wrong with that)
3. Newscasters: are people who have a lot of connections to interesting facts, events, news stories, and happenings. They are the conduit for other people (the rest of us) to hear about things that otherwise we would never know about.
4. Socializers: are people who stay connected with their friends and monologue and comment on the current events of their day.
5. Positionizers: are people who have something to say. They have a position, an issue or a cause that is near and dear. They are using the twitverse as a platform to disseminate their opinion.
6. Servers: are those who want to help people in their journeys of discovery to whatever it is that they want to discover.
7. Connectors: are people are a focusing point where diverse people who are interesting and interested can meet with someone they otherwise might never meet.
8. Innovators: are people who have original ideas. They are creative wellsprings that, prior to the computer age, would be hard to find. Inertia of old ideas would create friction to keep the surging of new and vital ideas from bubbling up to the surface. Now it is possible to put new ideas out for public consumption at the beginning edge of the curve of change. It makes society much more elastic and dynamic.
I’m sure there are more trends, but still, it is a pretty interesting chocolate ripple swirl of people, interests, directions and groups that are self-organizing on the internet.
If anyone is interested in chaos theory, this is a direct social lesson of what a non-linear dynamical system is and how they operate. Twitter is a place where there is lots of input and it self-organizes through people’s interests, attractions and relationships.
It is truly a wonderful thing to be a part of and it is an exciting time to see how this interaction can be one-on-one; at the same time it is a world-wide audience where large populations of people with similar thoughts and feelings can come together. It can be the ground-swell, the butterfly’s wings that creates cascading streams of variations in human interactions that generates social change and transformation. It can also be a monumental waste of time. Use it wisely.