I have been convinced by many Twitter users that most points can be made in less than 140 characters. I have NOT been convinced this is a good thing. Yes, Humpty Dumpty can be reduced to "Humpty is Dead." Health Care Reform could be reduced to "Public Option: yes or no?" But is it helpful to oversimplify. It seems to me that whether I am watching a big national policy debate or a local community discussion, the possibility for compromise and win-win solutions seems to go down as the reductionism and simplification of the debate goes up.It seems like Twitter is a pendulum swing from 5 years ago when the internet was the source of "over-information." So much information available about so many things with so few filters that many were paralyzed and overwhelmed. Now, reduce the conversation to 140 characters and we end up with less of a conversation and more of a series of announcements and either affirmations or counter announcements. Can community be created and strengthened through announcements? If yes, how? If no, then is there a place for Twitter in the nonprofit, community engagement world? Thoughts?

updated by @ron-dwyer-voss: 10/24/16 04:45:18PM

Good topic and good questions. At one point I thought the same way. I figured that Twitter depersonalizes and encourages people to remain in isolation. However, I decided to see what all the hype was about. What I found was that people were using social media in a way that I did not think was possible. Using, the church that I am on staff with, between Facebook and Twitter I have unprecedented access to probably 80% of our congregation. We exchange comments, encouragements, and questions in a way that we would have never had time to do before. And it allows us to do it in a way that is never an inconvenience because you can answer briefly immediately and then follow up more later. One final thing that is Twitter specific, in my community work I frequently post urls to blog posts on community events and updates. This has dramatically increased the amount of people that are accessing important community information.I believe that social media, when used responsibly and correctly, can help foster community, it can help build relationships, and it can be a great tool to spread information. However, it can never be a total replacement for the one on one setting. It is merely a powerful supplement.@camerongarcia@bellinghamtoys

The issue isn't whether Twitter is anti-community. It's a tool. Would you say that a hammer is anti-community, or a cable-access television program? No, it's just a tool, and like all tools, its value flows from appropriate use.Twitter is not for community-building or community discussion. Twitter is good for announcements, for time-sensitive alerts, and for driving traffic to a more discussion-friendly medium (like a web forum or community meeting).Disregarding the harsh grammer ... Don't use Twitter for what it's not good for.

Hi Ron - I felt your pain, and it took me over a year I think before I finally used my Twitter account. Since then, I've made lots of connections with fellow neighborhoodies and communitists there. I use it a lot now, as you can see from this: http://twitter.com/LeoRomero But I also respect people's time, and keep my tweets focused on one thing: building community in neighborhoods. - Thanks; Leo

Twitter's simplicity has allowed it to lend itself to many different uses, illustrated by the hundreds of twitter apps built and offered - many of them quite ingenious - and allowing for more purposes than can be summed up simply. For me, one key has been to understand that while you can follow, or hang with, a group on twitter, it's unreasonable to expect that it can be used for announcements to a general audience. (Those who expect twitter to help their marketing efforts can rest assured they'll be quickly eliminated from most twitter lists.)Mostly I use twitter to gauge sentiment, heat, breaking news, and insight from a winnowed group of people who I value listening to - they're not unified by any single field, purpose, group or sector, but simply have demonstrated to me that they're worth hearing from in their areas of expertise.