Time Magazine on Twitter

Managing Editor Richard Stengel had this to say about Twitter in the June 15 issue of Time magazine:

"There is an admirable brevity to tweets that is increasingly rare in our culture. Twitter is a uniquely democratic form of communication -- that is, it's open to everyone, there is no central authority, and people vote on whom and what they like by signing up to be followers. It's about the wisdom -- or folly -- of crowds. It's also a prototype of a new kind of shared national experience: people talking to one another in real time about real events...

"Its characteristics -- real-time conversation, instant links, groups of followers -- will affect the platforms that come after."

In the article itself by Steven B. Johnson, Twitter is identified as the newspaper of the very near -- or maybe here now -- future. "Increasingly, the stories that come across our radar will arrive via the passed links of the people we follow...a customized newspaper compiled from all the articles being read that morning by your social network."