When it comes to anything technology-related, I tend to be an ardent early adopter, typically to the point of personal identity pollution across the web. Sometimes, however, a service finds its way to critical mass and I see an audience larger than my Dunbar number begin to use it.

I’ve had my Twitter account for a while now in which time I’ve watched it grow from something my industry friends and I obsessed over to something mainstream media cannibalized and subsequently also made mainstream.

Twitter has always aspired to be a reflection of a global conversation and it’s probably safe to assume that we have reached that point. Anytime a substantial event occurs, the site’s trending topics—and the majority of my friends’ stream—shift to reflect this public consciousness. My definition of “substantial event” of course differs from yours. I tweet about design, startups, eating, traveling, going out with friends, Stevenotes, Longhorn football—things that I find interesting; things that I love. The idea is that this creates a stream that attracts others with similar interest to follow me, perpetuating conversation and activity as a whole.

In effect, Twitter has come to be a sort of Geiger counter for conversation (a.k.a. pop culture): on the micro level, it’s a record for each individual user while on the macro level, it becomes a big picture conversation.

If on the day of the pug gymnastics semifinals though, you find that what is in your stream is boring or irrelevant to your interests, you have the freedom to unfollow people perpetuating that specific topic that’s not to your tastes. I, on the other hand, will be following the pug tweets along closely. This asynchronous quality is the beauty of the site—something that Twitter CEO Evan Williams has noted as one of the services’ strong suits. The irony is that this unbalanced approach to virtual relationships is in part, what has allowed users to create a stream comprised of their favorite actors, singers and celebrities, in addition to their family, friends and business contacts.

Whenever I explain Twitter to prospective users (my mom), I tend to relate it to a party metaphor—describing it as something more exciting than “a global conversation.” It seems though that Larry King and Oprah have turned it into a “pants party”—one where everyone’s invited, but that the early attendees have to contend with.

I feel that this large quantity of usage presents an opportunity for a new micro-service to offer grouping or lists of some sort for your stream. This is not something I would expect Twitter to offer as they’ve declined to develop this type of feature and have plenty of issues to deal with at present (I’ve already told you how I feel about the fail whale); OpenMicroBlogging is not out of the question either.

As many people begin to rely on Twitter as one of their main forms of communication and news, I’m sure many early adopters and power users wish there was somewhere to take refuge, whether behind a filter or a similar service (Pownce, you were too young to die).

So when a topic comes across your screen that you find irrelevant, know that the jocks, skaters, politicos, the skanks, the PTA and the popular kids have all crashed the nerd party. Thankfully, this isn’t middle school anymore.

(Note: Kevin’s Twitter name above hasn’t been edited to protect his identity—he’s even more of an early adopter than I am and really has the username @k.)

PS: I reskinned the site. Last time I did this was over a year ago.

UPDATE: Holy redactions, Batman! On September 30th, Twitter announced they would be releasing List functionality. Color me excited.

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In the past twenty-four hours, I have come across a few articles regarding millennials and their involvement in the healthcare debate, most notably one from the LA Times and a piece by a guest commentator of my own generation on CNN.

I for one am fed up with people, mostly journalists fifteen to twenty years my senior, claiming they have insight into what my generation is thinking. It especially frustrates me when writers claim to know that my peers and I aren’t talking about these issues. Look hard enough and you’ll notice that the members of my generation are paying attention to what is going on, we do have opinions and we are expressing these opinions in the ways we best know how.

We talk about the state of political affairs while out at bars, during our lunch breaks and between classes. We queue up the transcript and video of President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress on his website. We download podcasts and mp3s of commentary on the address. We share articles on Facebook and tweet links to our blog posts elaborated with our own personal insight (lately, every other notification on my Facebook news feed has been surrounding national healthcare). We IM, SMS and direct message each other with quips like “what is Michelle *wearing*?” and “you lie!“. We ingest this information because it is all around us, day and night.

So, I’m here to tell you today, rest assured that we are watching, listening and paying attention. We understand the ramifications of an issue of this magnitude and how it affects the short term and especially the long term. The Commonwealth Fund, a health policy research foundation, reports that millennials account for 30% of the uninsured population. We know we’re broke and uninsured and it scares us shitless.

As much as we’re informed and have sharpened our opinions since November, however, who is there to ask us what we think? The last time someone made sure to let us know that our opinion mattered, we elected him president. Apart from 25 year old CNN anchor Nicole Lapin, we don’t really have anyone our age as a representative on any major news outlet (CNN, Fox News or otherwise) and we especially don’t have anyone representing us in the White House or in any position with any sort of political clout. Instead, I’m relegated to sit at the political kids’ table with the rest of my peers to make sure we don’t disturb the adults.

If politicians and government sought out our demographic the way marketers seek out my spending money, there would be no need for the articles above to be written.

In the CNN commentary, Erica Williams eventually gets around to saying that our generation actually is mobilizing to some capacity, but I think that’s something that’s been going on for as long as I could vote. Millennials have opinions and insights, but until you turn to us and ask what we really think, you more than likely won’t get an answer from us. For us, that acknowledgement is what we seek as that’s the ultimate sign of respect. “Millennial experts” will be quick to retort that this is that sense of entitlement rearing its ugly head, but I can assure you it’s not. We want to be seen as political equals (equals, period?), not kids who just get in the way. We blow up our Facebook and Twitter profiles with our opinions because those are the spaces we feel most comfortable—they’re the places we feel we have the right to express our opinions.

For our entire lives we’ve been taught to wait our turn and that we can only speak when our hand is raised and when called upon. So call on us—our hands are raised.

Instead of elaborating on what my personal opinions are on healthcare reform, I’ll leave you instead with my favorite part of President Obama’s speech from last night:

I understand how difficult this health care debate has been.  I know that many in this country are deeply skeptical that government is looking out for them.  I understand that the politically safe move would be to kick the can further down the road – to defer reform one more year, or one more election, or one more term. 

But that’s not what the moment calls for.  That’s not what we came here to do.  We did not come to fear the future.  We came here to shape it.  I still believe we can act even when it’s hard.  I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility, and gridlock with progress.  I still believe we can do great things, and that here and now we will meet history’s test.

I look forward to this discussion, Mr. Obama, and I hope you give me the chance to be a part of this discussion in some capacity.

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A few weeks ago, I came across a new collaboration between the keyboardist from one of my favorite bands, Vampire Weekend, and the lead singer of Ra Ra Riot. The new band is called Discovery and I recently purchased their album.

Hold on, let me read that back to you. I actually exchanged money for their music. And get this: I didn’t buy it on iTunes either—I went to my local independent record shop, Waterloo Records, to get it.

Wait, what is this, 1998?!

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, is known, among other things, for evangelizing the concept of giving things away and how this “free economy” is the future of business. As luck would have it actually, his latest book Free: The Future of a Radical Price was released the same day as Discovery’s LP (and of course you can read for free in its entirety before ordering it on Amazon). This is not a review for the book (which is a great read), but instead a personal account of why I think Chris is absolutely right in my interaction with the album, which lead to its eventual purchase.

In order to hear a few songs from any band nowadays, you can usually count on visiting the band’s MySpace page or scour The Pirate Bay for some torrents of the album to download before it is released. The internet tends to be a veritable black market of bootlegs and pirated files if you know the right places to look. In the case of Discovery, if you navigated over to their website any time after the official announcement of the collaboration between Batmanglij and Miles, you could actually listen to the album in its entirety. This concept is definitely not new by any stretch, but other elements seemed to play into what lead to my purchase of the physical album.

Of course the tracks on dscvry.net were not downloadable to my computer or iPod, but I could listen to each track as much as I wanted, any time I wanted via a Flash widget on the site (which I could easily embed into my blog or a friend’s MySpace page if I had any friends who used MySpace). After a few listens to the album, I was hooked and definitely wanted to get the album on the day it was released.

The album was going to be available a few days before the release date, digitally from Amie Street, with $2 going to Oxfam. Or if I was patient, it would be available on 7/7 in indie record stores and a few weeks thereafter in major retail outlets like Amazon or Target.

Immediacy is definitely an issue with music, considering how much new music is released every week. A digital download, in this case, was tempting, but didn’t seem like the best option. I feel my final purchase decision was influenced by having the notion present that buying from somewhere like Target was somehow second-rate (the fact that there was no firm date on the release set for the retailer seemed to create that notion in my head).

Since Discovery’s marketing team gave me 1) exposure to a product in its entirety so I could be fully aware of what I was getting into; 2) by clearly defining the channels for me to purchase said product and 3) by placing different weights on the aforementioned channels, causing me to sway one way more than the other options, it’s no wonder eventually led me to purchase the record.

Sometimes companies do things just right and everyone ends up happy in the end. In this case, I have a great summer soundtrack that I don’t have to burn or Dropbox to you. Instead, I can just link you to dscvry.net and you have a listen for yourself.

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In about ten days, I’m going to be departing for a trip I’ve been planning on having for a while (or at least mentally considering since senior year of high school). So far, I’ll be traveling around the east coast of the U.S. for the first week of the trip, then making my way over to London to see some friends from college.

After a few days in London, I’ll be flying to Barcelona to hang there. I’ve never been overseas and the only international travel I’ve done has been to Mexico. I’m really excited and I am willing to put money on the fact that my mind is going to explode once I get to London.

What advice do you have for me? I’ll be gone only for about four weeks and I leave for Baltimore on July 17.

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Yesterday, Facebook staff posted an announcement on the company blog regarding the unlocking of Facebook usernames or “vanity URLs.” Now, instead of going to facebook.com/profile.php?id=7901458, starting this weekend, you could visit facebook.com/cesart (or whatever name I choose on Friday night) to write on my wall and view pictures I’ve uploaded.

This is huge for social networking. Not only does it make Facebook more semantic and easier for people to use, but it also adds a new level of interaction between users—assuming people start to use Facebook more like Twitter.

From the announcement:

Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names.

I imagine two situations occurring:

1. People who link their Twitter accounts to their Facebook accounts (like me) will see increased use of the @ symbol in things like Facebook comments or any other time there is need to reference another user—there will be demand to link to the profiles when someone’s username is mentioned;
2. people who don’t merge Twitter and Facebook will begin to use the @ syntax, further blurring the lines between Facebook and Twitter.

My advice, and this is what I’m planning to do, is to make sure you’re happy with your Twitter account username since that’s always editable. Come Friday night, make your Twitter and Facebook usernames match, because (as stated in the username FAQ) once you lock in your Facebook name, there’s no going back; your online identity will be set.

EDIT: I indeed ended up with facebook.com/cesart. Let’s be friends (that is of course, if we already have met in real life)!

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