If you thought the hype surrounding Twitter had gone as far as it could, think again.
We seem to be approaching a canonisation, certainly in the way celebrities are anointing the microblogging service and its founders.
Two of them, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, feature in the 2009 Time 100 of the world’s most influential people this week in the “Builders and Titans” section of the magazine.
“Years from now, when historians reflect on the time we are currently living in, the
names Biz Stone and Evan Williams will be referenced side by side with the likes of
Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Guglielmo Marconi, Philo Farnsworth, Bill
Gates and Steve Jobs,” their citation reads.
The creation of Twitter “is as significant and paradigm-shifting as the invention of Morse code, the telephone, radio, television or the personal computer.”
Ever so slightly over the top perhaps? Inaccurate even? – Try convincing the 60 per cent of new Twitter users who fail to tweet again the following month, according to Nielsen research. And it was Jack Dorsey, the third co-founder, who actually created Twitter.
Time magazine’s journalists are not entirely to blame if the piece errs – it is written by Ashton Kutcher, the actor married to Demi Moore. He won a race with CNN to 1m Twitter followers recently and introduced Oprah Winfrey to the phenomenon.
Those two events themselves helped send Twitter into the hype stratosphere, but now, even Apple – the arbiter of cool – is joining in.
In a feature on its website, it describes Twitter as a “triumph of humanity” and praises its Mac-using staff:
“With just under 30 employees, the sense of social responsibility runs high at Twitter” where they “never forget that a billion people go without clean drinking water every day.”
So there you have it, sainthood beckons, although perhaps Twitter could manage a
manned mission to Mars and bring about world peace on the way.
