Organizers' Collaborative

The history of Twitter may soon be divided into two time frames, Before & After Oprah. Before Oprah, the Twitterers of the world numbered some 6 million and growing fast. Now, who knows? That number may have grown by a million.

Still, the frenzied rush to Twitter and the world of micro-blogging has its skeptics. “I just don’t get Twitter!” a workshop participant declared to me in frustration. As with any newly popular technology, the uses of Twitter are still evolving. Fortunately, there is a useful primer of online organizers: The DigiActive Guide to Twitter for Activists.
@DigiActive’s guide distinguishes several uses for activism: spreading the word; campaigning; coordinating action; crowdsourcing; and personal security. To be sure, there are interesting examples for each.

As Twitter and other micro-blogging services become even more popular, it is likely that the relative importance of these different applications will change. Already, business users are speculating that the true value for micro-blogging lies in its potential as a research tool (i.e. a variant on crowdsourcing). For grassroots activists, this may be particularly valuable in holding large institutions accountable for their practices; after all, if Twitter is a site for constructing a corporate image, then surely this a place to challenge the corporation.

This is clearly something that we will be following.