You may have heard the story about a commuter in London who offended Matt Buckland (@ElSatanico), only to realize a few hour later that Matt will be his interviewer for a job at a company he recruits for.
This story went viral on Twitter. The on-line media attention followed. I was in Prague at that time when I saw the story trending on Twitter. As I finished reading the story, I had a quick look at @ElSatanico’s profile on Twitter. I realized his company does something that resonates with me. So I tweeted him and he tweeted back. And now I know that there’s a company called Forwardpartners out there. I know what they do, and we may or may not be discussing some opportunities going forward.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
If Matt would not tweeted about what happened to him, there would be no story. Subsequently, I would have never heard about his company.
I believe that Twitter enables us to move further away from the post-industrial economy into the era of the connection economy.
This was not the first instance of how Twitter helped me discover new things. For example, I would have never heard about Frederic Laloux’s “Reinventing Organizations”. I would have never discovered Buffer – which is a tool I now use every day for sharing content on social media. But most importantly, I would not have met some great people at conferences who – like I did – posted tweets about what’s going on at the event, only to end up interacting with each other and meeting up in person for a coffee later on.
I believe there is something going on. It is so easy to interact with people on Twitter and make new connections regardless of where you are. I believe that Twitter enables us to move further away from the post-industrial economy into the era of the connection economy.
Connection economy is an environment where it no longer matters whether you are able to mass-produce first and then find the market for your products. In the connection economy all that matters is whether or not you have a tribe (connections) interested enough to care about what you do or what you produce … to buy it from you.
Twitter enables this. It is why I believe that Twitter – or similar platform that may emerge in the following years – will be The Next Big Thing.
