Twittering the news

In what is rapidly (OK, it's happened three times in the last few days), Twitter is taking on a role that I'm sure its inventors never conceived.

• Last week, Robert Scoble offered to pose questions at the Google OpenSocial press conference. He took questions over Twitter. Mike Krigsman called this the 'hidden press conference.'
• Today, several people I know are Twittering from the Defrag conference
• In Germany, the O'Reilly sponsored Web 2.0 Expo conference is being Twittered for updates and liveblogging

All events are/were backed up/parsed by blog media reports of varying length and quality. Why does this matter? The Twittersphere (or is it Twitterverse?) is becoming a fresh channel for disseminating the real-time thoughts and observations of people attending events. Tweets are adding nuance and color to very loosely connected conversations from people I know and trust. No-one thought it up. It is emergent behavior of the kind Professor Andrew McAfee has predicted. Here's an example: In his ZDNet report, Phil Windley explains why Michael Barrett is terrified about the way Web 2.0 'stuff' is perpetuating the security problems of the past. Fellow Irregular Jeff Nolan in Tweets says:

Barrett: Web 2.0 fixes none of the root 1.0 issues, it adds new stuff with little thought about security about 2 hours ago from Snitter Michael Barrrett: web 1.0 security standards are broken. about 2 hours ago from Snitter

VC investor Jeff Clavier has this to say in his Tweets:

Web 2.0 does not fix Web 1.0 issues and adds XML/Xpath issues about 2 hours ago from twitterrific Troubled to hear that OpenID as it stands today could not be used by Paypal because it is to easy to hack about 2 hours ago from twitterrific Great presentation from Paypal's Michael Barrett - their security officer - about all the flawed protocols we are using every day on the Web about 2 hours ago from twitterrific  

Ben Metcalfe chimes in with:

from Defrag: PayPal CISO says around 30% of endpoint PCs are compromised about 2 hours ago from im

If tools like Twitter become ubiquitous; events and press conferences become 'open house' comment rings about companies, products, relationships...the list goes on. If you're in corporate PR, IR or AR then life just got a whole lot more challenging because Twitter has suddenly developed the potential to be  highly disruptive.