Example 1: Facebook. I came out against Facebook quite a long time ago, and that was even before I knew about the privacy and data issues, and how difficult it is to get out once you’re in. Facebook: still saying No.
Example 2: Twitter. I’ve been resisting signing up for Twitter for a while. Not because I didn’t like the idea. Quite the opposite. It looked thoroughly entertaining and addictive – but not, perhaps, all that useful, and I waste quite enough time playing with foolish things on my computer as it is (*cough* damn Sudoku *cough*). How can you possibly do anything meaningful with 140 characters?
And yet, what is Twitter if not another manifestation of the adaptability of the blog as a medium of communication? You can use it for crowdsourcing. You can use it to protest against political repression. The famous can use it to stay in touch with their fans. The non-famous can use it to stay in touch with each other.
Twitter’s genius is not the 140 characters. It’s the hash key. Oh, and the @. Tagging rocks, and metadata rules our world, baby.
So I’ve given in.
@sharon_howard is probably going to regret this…