The Argument Machine

However, something that should be pointed out: brevity is not inherently the cause for misunderstanding. Brevity is a constraint. Don't try to say hard things in fewer words if you don't understand wit. And, perhaps as importantly, don't say witty things who don't understand them. This is a lesson every good marketing class will teach you, and Ogilvy preached:

"Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon."

But, I suppose when you force the masses to be brief, they won't think of Ogilvy.

Ten years ago, you had to write a blog post and hit publish.. and that gave you a chance to reflect and retract. But now you can tap out a gut reaction to the latest drama and keep the feedback loop going.

This is all just based on personal observation and therefore unscientific, but I suspect most communities have similar levels of antagonism between members and topics up for internal conflict. Those communities whose members are communicating more on Twitter, however, have dramas that rumble on for longer and get more external coverage than those sheltered away on private mailing lists and IRC channels.

He's giving us the answer we all want to hear; what we appeal to. Reality of course is the opposite, and manufactured drama attracts a lot better than education, for example.

The article's argument is something like if people wanted to learn something they'd go to wikipedia or stack exchange, but they don't, they want to read (manufactured) drama. So twitter makes money off them. It would be a much harder sell for twitter to move into SE or wikipedia's turf, so they don't and shouldn't if they want to make money.

If they try to do this, they may as well tell their users to move to Facebook and close shop.

Twitter is what it is precisely because of, not in spite of, these "limitations". Like most new media it's defined in terms of constraints it has. Without them, Twitter will be no different than everything else.

You mean like a mosque or a church? ducks