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If he had written "Twitter is important because a critical mass of important people use it to communicate directly with the general public" I would not have called the essay dumb. What he actually wrote is that Twitter was a new messaging protocol which was (a) obviously not true at the time and (b) a red herring.





I'm not quite sure why he expressed himself in a way that is easily misunderstood. He probably shouldn't have used "protocol" as the word/concept he wanted to communicate. I think what he was trying to say, is that it was a new/fresh modality of communication - a new way to communicate, by having public channels you could stream to.

The same way giving people access to email opens up new behaviour, or access to networked computers allows new behaviour. Or similar to how Job's iPhone drove people to a new behaviour. Also, until they locked down their APIs in the name of control and monetization, it had a feel of access to a new protocol.* I am fully aware twitter is not an RPC specced protocol.


> I'm not quite sure why he expressed himself in a way that is easily misunderstood.

You both agree that expression is wrong. Why do you have to further recreate argument of the blog? These discussion based on loose associations are pointless and everyone will talk past each other.




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