The power and beauty of Twitter

Here are Twitter’s key people (Jack Dorsey @jack, Biz Stone @biz, Evan Williams @ev, and Dick Costolo @dickc) capturing the essence of what makes Twitter so special, so different, so important.

Twitter may be the greatest communication platform in human history to-date

As we make our way through 2013, I continue to find people who dismiss Twitter, saying "I'm not interested in hearing what someone had for lunch." Like any technology, uses for Twitter run the spectrum from useful to useless, from meaningful to banal, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

However, I think more people would benefit from Twitter if they understood what it represents. I find Twitter to be one of the greatest communication platforms ever invented. I think it takes a rightful place at the top of an august assembly of the most significant paradigm-shifting communication platforms in human history.

New York Times paywall: the dawn of social media tethering?

Readers who land at the NYT site via social media links will still be allowed to read the full article.

Thus, it will make sense for people to search, not for a link directly to a NYT article (which will continue to be metered/monitored/limited), but for commentary in a social media site that links back to the article.

If your work regularly consults the New York Times, you can become essentially an NYT tether - your readers can continue to access New York Times articles through your references.