You can't remain in a vacuum. To stay on top of what was happening, you have to be in the "town square" and listen to the conversations going on around you. How else will you know that the Rampaging Mongols are about to hit your village? Not by staying cloistered in your yurt. :O)

But tons and tons of people still do remain tucked in safely in their yurts. Could we possibly be creating our own Mongols?

We are the Mongols.

Let me bolster that comment of "We are the Mongols". If ever, Heaven Forbid another 9-11 occurs. Lets see where the amount of activity will be. Online. Twitter, vlogs, chat. That networking online will become a unifier and a place of comfort. Those not in it now, will discover it and find the community they long for.

Maybe not even that extreme. I can't remember who said it, but we'll know this has gone mainstream when police and fire departments start using it to communicate.

Is there a way to gauge Twitter spikes during internal strife or events that cross all socio-economic classes? i.e. Paris Riots, UK elections, Celeb Arrests/Jail time/pregnancies?

Now that would be interesting.

I can't pinpoint one reason...

I use Social Tools to learn, network, build relationships, stay up-to-date, etc... I'd imagine others do the same. Although different people have different needs, I would find it a bit short-sighted to think that Social Tools may be used to accomplish only a single task...

Cheers,
Aidan

Personally, I stay away from online meeting sites like myspace or facebook or whatever else there is. To me, a face-to-face conversation with a friend or a family member compensates an hour of online chatting, while the news are perfectly layed out in certain websites or newspapers.

I can see the allure. Do you ever feel that you're missing out as far as business communication is concerned?

Sorry in advance if I misunderstood you, but communicating via social sites with business purposes seems unacceptable to me. Phones or e-mail are the way I prefer. Through skype i talk with my friends, but none of them are someone I haven't seen in real life. I just couldn't take a person seriously if I saw a picture of him doing a funny face or whatever. In my opinion, a man should have two lives: his personal life and his business life. Sure, you can mix them, but carefully.

Indeed, I agree to an extent. What about people who use Twitter or even Facebook (in some edge cases) exclusively for business? Do you think that's an acceptable use of the technology?

Firstly, I'd like you to know that I haven't met anyone who uses Facebook or Twitter for business, so I don't have firsthand experience. I could imagine a business or it's owner creating a facebook page with pretty photos for commercial purposes, if facebook allows it. I imagine marketing through facebook, just posting a link on your profile and making hundreds of friends, can be quite effective.

Yea, Facebook actually allows brands to build fan pages. There are plenty of marking types on Twitter. Use Twitterscan.com and take a look.