18th
Twitter as a serendipity accelerator
Definition of serendiptiy. Source
ser·en·dip·i·ty
–noun
1. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
2. good fortune; luck: the serendipity of getting the first job she applied for.
I was talking to Scott Kveton the other day & he confirmed what i already believe to be true. Twitter is acting as an accelerator of serendipity. Why is this? I believe the following factors play a large role in this.
1. Reach - It’s all about numbers. If you join Twitter & only follow a few people, you are still exposing yourself to possibly everyone on Twitter or is using a program to search Twitter.
2. Focused search - People/companies use programs to search after terms that they are interested in. This connects groups with common interests that would not have normally met.
3. Concise communication - 140 characters means that there is no space for artistic flair & redundant words. It cuts straight to the point. Let’s say that in comparison to an email then you are getting the same message at an 80% saving on reading time. That means you could possibly process greater than 5 times as much information as you normally would.
4. Chaos - The people that can read your communications are outside of your control. If they wish to communicate with you, they can. This is a very important factor. Twitter brings a chaos factor which in turn enables the serendipity factor.
So Reach + Search + Concise communication + Choas, means that you will meet more people that are: like minded, have interesting ideas, that inspire you, that you inspire, than you could in any other current circumstance.
So does all of this enable accelerated serendipity? I would say yes.
At no point do you have 100% control over the the lines of communication.
At any point can someone stumble across open discussion & join in/contribute/distrupt.
Connections multiply through connecting to others who are in communication with those that you already know & therefore bring you into dialogues that are impossible to anticipate.
Everything might seem chaotic but when an chain of thought presents itself, then it really feels like the people/processes/resources needed to help move the ideas forward also present themselves in the correct order of sequence.
Anyone else feeling this happen to them?
Tweet me if you have a story to tell or a crazy idea you want to discuss with me :)
