The title of this post comes from a corporate internal assessment paper reviewing methods of social media.  The details are not important, but the perspective is shared widely.  Beyond the eager advocates and the digiterati; acceptance or understanding of the Twitter social media tool is slow in many organizations.  Some who have a corporate need to listen, speaking here of journalists, are some of the tool’s most eager adopters.  Others are not so sure, clinging to notions of control and hopes of engineering in what appears to be chaos.

Many have written about the uses of Twitter during the San Diego fires and the Mumbai atrocity.  Since those public examples are not sufficiently compelling, allow me to get personal for a moment and note a few personal narratives – these may help explain my gobsmacked reaction when I first read the phrase that forms this post’s title.

To me, Twitter is fostering some of the most meaningful conversations I’m having these days, and I’m having them with complete strangers – who then become part of my world.

* On 20 January, I spent the morning standing outside in a D.C. street, holding a purple ticket.  I sent a message via Twitter regarding the experience in the afternoon, and found myself being interviewed by telephone by a local media outlet within minutes.  A local television anchor also picked up on the messages sent by myself and others and promised to follow up.  The Purple Ticket of Doom is now legend, and the voices raised (I was but one of tens of thousands) via Twitter and elsewhere led to a necessary review of procedures and security for this historic event.

* A chance conversation about trust agents on the Web led to a business relationship whereupon I hired a virtual assistant who helped me get this page (and my business) together as I stood up Bordeaux & Associates, LLC.

* Another chance conversation with someone working in the intelligence community led to a business lunch with his friend, the CEO of a firm that delivers consulting talent to this community.

* An odd phone call this week, a recorded “robo-call” (questionable political tactic) from Gov. Mike Huckabee, led to my posting a message via Twitter – a bit tongue-in-cheek.  Someone who searches Twitter for evidence of this tactic contacted me in minutes, and this morning, Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic posted a piece detailing this development.  Calls were reported in Virginia and Washington State – Mr. Ambinder used my Twitter posting in his piece.

* A snippet of a Twitter conversation I was having this morning:

Some Guy in Germany: “Portals are long past obsolescence…if they can’t be cracked open, “remixed”, and “mashed” then info is lost like email”

Me: ” Thinking about portals in terms of hybrid info architectures – central v decentralized. Do they have any use?”

SGG: “depends on def of portal. if info is accessible and self-descriptive in order to allow for new contextual relevance, then sure”

Me: “So new definition of portal may be in order. You’re not assuming a “multi-level” taxonomy will satisfy those info reqs, I assume”

SGG: “dependence on centralization is a hurdle –> reduces possibility for new independent niches of knowledge and expertise to emerge”

Me: “My ref to centralization is decision-making authorities, not information arch. Grand strategy centralized, but learns from enviro”

SGG: “multi-level is focused on satisfying hierarchy reqs; I’m more inclined to focus on horizontal “linking” of data over aggregation” and ” indeed, depends on the larger purpose not the particular tool or architecture…environ is by nature decentralized, as is context”

Me: “Agree on horizontal linking, what is mechanism for discovering and learning patterns?”

SGG: “good question! discovery based on faceted search and emergent info flows, learning patterns depend on perpetual analytics of data”

Me: ” We’re on same page. Context is extremely local and fleeting, and impossibly to *completely” convey. Thinking pattern discovery.”

SGG: “we are definitely on the same page…the work flows of the org chart might not represent the actual or best movement of knowledge”

Whatever you take away from that conversation, it came about from an offhand comment I made to someone else regarding the (perceived?) obsolescence of enterprise portal technology.  That comment led to SGG’s first message above.  In my practice, I’m developing a strategy for advancing a specific client’s “community of practice” online resource.  This, and related, conversations will improve the value delivered to my client, as I test and explore the tenets that underlie my recommendations.

Twitter (and social media overall) is lowering the transaction costs associated with the global conversation.  The results, I anticipate, will be remarkably meaningful.

About 2,000 years ago, the way to communicate across distance – if you had means – was to employ a human messenger.  Lacking that, you may use smoke or fire relays to communicate along specific “lines of communication.”

About 100 years ago, the rule in pre-WWII U.S. (for residential use) was party lines, nicely captured in this article.  The phone in this image was designed by someone who never considered that a user would need or be able to “dial their own number.”  Instead, you would pick up a phone and hear a voice.

Following WWII trunk lines, switches, and accepted protocols for area codes eliminated the need for operators to complete a call: their whose job became more sophisticated than just manually making connections (disclaimer:  both my mother and grandmother worked as telephone operators in pre-war Manhattan). The user interface disappeared and the professionals evolved.

Their job was replaced by a dial tone and phones that let you enter your own numbers. The numbers were nationally translatable such that you could theoretically dial any phone on the country. You still needed an operator for overseas calls, but eventually even this requirement disappeared as other countries signed onto protocols and became accessible.

Why is the state of today’s dial tone? Where do we still need human assistance to connect? Is the assistance available?  How often do we give up, failing to reach our party?

Last week the Bride tried her hand at buying health insurance online and came away a little older. We wanted to use AARP, as they resold an Aetna product.  She signed in to AARP, authenticated there and was sent to an Aetna link. At this link, we find that our Google Chrome  browser is not supported.

And here is where our dial tone broke. 

She opened a different browser and pasted the current link. The problem, we’ve lost the ‘breadcrumb’ and now Aetna thinks we’re coming directly to them. No discount from AARP. Worse, she has now ‘created’ her account – not associated with AARP –  and cannot undo this without speaking to an Aetna representative.

We appear to live in a “thin client” world, but in fact this presumes we all have browsers that are supported, broadband access, Adobe products, (sorry, iPhone users), etc.

Our interface today continues to confound, even as we extend the form and nature of our interactions. It’s as if we were sold a new “phone” every year or so, warned that the previous model would somehow let robbers into our homes – except they now steal our very identities rather than our jewelry.  

Each new “phone” would have new features for richer connections, but mysteriously wouldn’t connect us to certain numbers.

As we add browsers, Macromedia, QuickTime, Windows Media, and update each  based on vendor production schedules and security breaches – are we making more or less difficult to establish a global dial tone?

Are we converging or diverging?  Perhaps both at once – at least it can seem that way.  As our browser experience becomes more complex, our sharing of fragments – our chatter – becomes simpler.

This is what social media means to me. It raises the dial tone. I can reach/search/listen to a global conversation. People can engage using their cell phones, any browser, a myriad of apps designed against an open API, etc.

As of this writing, Twitter has achieved a party line for millions. Someone asked yesterday “does anyone know the username for the owners of Twitter?” others chimed in immediately to offer assistance, and it became obvious to me that no operator is needed to help us connect using this particular dial tone.