Twitter has hit the tipping point, and may now even threaten Google. The search function possibilities

WARNING: This blog post is so long you won’t be able to read it all in under 96 seconds!

The 140 character communication technology Twitter has hit the tipping point. It has real-time search functions that might even threaten Google.

I blog for The Walrus. A publication committed to long-form journalism. Blogs should ideally be readable in 96 seconds or less, which is the average length of time your eyes will rest upon my page. Uh-oh. Even worse, I blog about Twitter and the bleeding edges of electronic communication technologies. The viability of which can be boiled down to one thing: being short.

Lucky for me, length isn’t what it used to be.

It is patronizing to pathologize an entire cohort of blog readers, Twitterers and socialnet users as dumbed-down sufferers of ADHD. Traditional notions of length have a signifying function. For example, I like big books means I have had the privilege of attaining the cultural capital of a particular kind of literacy. As an owner of this kind of literacy I prefer to spend my leisure time in the world of books. It expresses what social class I belong to. It lets you know immediately that I don’t regularly cinq-à-sept at McDonalds. And after work I don’t go mudding* then come home to a Bud and Grand Theft Auto. I read.

There is a new kind of literacy in town. The literacy of Twitter. It is not really so new. It has actually been around for a couple years. Now, having entered into popular culture, it has attained the cultural relevance I have been anticipating for over a year.

A tweet is pejoratively short when evaluated by kinds of literacy with the aforementioned social-class functions. But a tweet is long in other ways. Each one is a segment of a millions-of-characters long and potentially infinite book. Longer than War and Peace by far. There is no one person who has read it all. That is not necessary. Twitter literacy means understanding what is possible within this project. For example, knowing how and why you follow trends with Twitscoop or search in real-time and monitor key words from your desktop using Tweetdeck. Now that Good Morning America uses the phrase Twitter Nation, this kind of literacy isn’t about conferring nerd or tech-elite status. It’s about basic communication skills in North America.

It is no longer meaningful to ask what can you do with Twitter. If you ask me that question I will respond with a listless sigh and a link to my blog. It is far more intriguing and fun if you ask me what can’t we do with Twitter. Then we can talk.

*courtesy of Twitterer Devile