After the iPhone, introduced in 2007, the most substantive and influential disruption on a popular global scale has probably been the growth of social networks.
And in that category, the most substantive disruption has been from Twitter.
Facebook is of course larger, but it was possible to communicate with friends or groups and to share pictures without Facebook, and it is now more so than ever. Facebook’s edge isn’t for subscribers as much as for publishers and advertisers.
What Twitter introduced however was entirely new… the means for anyone to communicate with anyone and everyone everywhere…
to link to individuals or participate in groups without limit, to create or join or leave discussions without limit…
and for the network composition to change organically, in a moment.
Twitter made the world a broadcaster… and a receiver of the world, simultaneously.
This has impacted markets, industries, politics, economies, culture, more deeply than has any other social media, and even now there is no popular alternative.
Ironically, it feels as though this lightweight app doesn’t get the recognition it deserves, not that it matters…
Speculative Fiction 