I opened my twitter accounts (@lunamania and @djtoro) when twitter really was mostly about what people ate for lunch. Pretty useless, but kind of amusing. Then more people joined and God, Darth Vader and Oprah joined so we now have a never ending twitterverse of useless information to wade through. But somewhere along the way, the sheer number of twittering people, organizations and dieties evolved into a twitterverse offering a particular collective interpretation of real world events that is instantly accessible by anyone with an internet connection (assuming you’re not in a country that censors content).

Given the demographics of twitter users and the 140 word limit, notable twitter trends lean towards the tech heavy (#Amazon Fail) or just trendy (#Susan Boyle). And most times, hoards atwitter about a topic don’t generate any new information per se, but only indicate that lots of users are thinking/reading about that topic (#Swine Flu). In fact, the 140 character limit poses a hard barrier to developing and sharing analytical thoughts.

This all makes me wonder if people will eventually seek out more robust techniques to share their ideas, articles, artwork, etc. If so, I agree with Andrew Davis that Twitter is Done. Tumblr is Next. Tumblr has been around for a while, but until now, it felt a bit like an in-between platform. It was the dead simplest way to start a fairly content rich and personalized blog/tumblelog. That said, at the time it was released, if you had the geek factor to be interested in blogging, WordPress and blogger were just as easy and offered more customization. I set up my Tumblr account mostly to take advantage of Tumblr’s one-click publishing capacity and stream various articles that caught my eye into this blog.

Now that more people are sharing and creating online content, I think Andrew’s article is onto something. Maybe twitter has primed more people to create richer online identities. The caveat is the premise that people actually want to engage in a deeper, more substantive way with each other. On my up days, I imagine an informed cyberworld where respectful, passionate and analytical discussions take place and shape real world events and relationships. But most days are spent contemplating the sheer number of dumb asses twittering about how much porn they watch at work. It’ll be interesting to see how all this evolves.

In the meantime, I’m trying to sort out how to manage and integrate multiple social media accounts. I’m interested in hearing your ideas.

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