My first entry in this list... Joined AOIR recently and have been enjoying the exhanges. In relation to the twitter conversation, I am a bit surprised by it. My two cents:My first entry in this list...

In my two years of experience with Twitter, it appears to me that the question the creators of Twitter asked: what are you doing? is irrelevant. Communities of twittering are really co -constructing their questions and thus responding whatever is relevant to their communities. Most of the people I follow don't necessarily tell me what they are doing but may be what they care for, what they want others to act on, they are recommending something , the most interesting twitters are probably the scheduled dialogues among communities of twitters and/or conversations about themes on a regular scheduled basis. In my experience, researchers who tare too certain or talk a lot about Twitter in definitive terms tend to be folks who are not very involved in the process. That is, it is an outside perspective (often along some fear) rather than a curious and ethnographic/caring perspective. I am not sure why this is such a pervasive reaction considering the tremendous impact of these social technologies on how a large segment of people communicate. The backchannel communication is core these days in many situations, to ironize the 140 characters seems too simplistic. May be I am missing the point here and it is not that I cannot laugh at a joke but it seems the jokes hide something else.