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Twitter passion (Today — Maybe)155 Commentsby MG Siegler on May 9, 2009picture-18If you’ve been reading some of the comments on TechCrunch recently,perhaps you’ve noticed some backlash against our coverage of Twitter. As is usually thecase with comments, a small, but vocal minority get all worked up about something andair their grievances — over and over again. And that’s fine. More often than not, thecomments are amusing, and sometimes they’re even insightful. We’ve actually alreadyweighed in on the topic of Twitter coverage once before, a few months ago, but seeingas I’m now the primary driver of Twitter stories on the site, I thought I’d take thisweekend afternoon to weigh in myself.Simply put, we write about Twitter so often because right now, it matters. From newsorganizations to movie stars, from earthquakes to fires, from Facebook to Google —everyone seems to be talking about, to or with Twitter. In an era of masscommunication, it is the latest medium. And it’s fundamentally changing the ways inwhich people interact with others using the web. What you may view as a stupidlysimple service with no real point, I view as one of the few inspirational products in bleaktimes.I would argue that Twitter works so well precisely because it’s so simple. It fools somepeople with its “What are you doing?” question that resides at the top of the page, butTwitter can pretty much be about whatever you want it to be about. That’s why it’s anabsolutely brilliant platform for so many new startups to build on top of. And thosestartups are really the key. They’re what are keeping Twitter so hot right now. Every day,something new launches on top of Twitter; some get coverage, some don’t. Some aresilly, some are smart, some might actually work. But overall, the level of activity aroundthe platform is amazing.And that activity, fuels growth and feeds the system full of its most important life-blood:Information. It’s this real-time information that is Twitter’s most valuable asset. And it’sinformation that Twitter will soon begin mining in more interesting ways with its searchproduct — which should be useful to a lot of people. And it should lead to even moreinnovation and more startups.
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