Again, credit to Shaun at Microblogging.com on sending me notice of this awesome video.

The speaker/lecturer is in the video is,  Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody. I’ll admit, I do have the book but have yet to read it.

This is a superb view of how something like Twitter became so successful in what we may deem as “third world” countries like Kenya or rural China. It is odd to think of this as almost reverse technology – taking for granted when others use the same tool out of necessity.

This is a very, very good audio and video presentation.

How Cellphones, Twitter, Facebook Can Make History

I am late to the game, per se, in getting on Twitter, Facebook, and social media/networking modality. Yet, I can see and have my own data to measure just how successful my endeavors have been since getting on Twitter. Facebook remains to be seen as I have been on a grand total of, egad, three days now.

Shout out to twitter.com/microblogging (microblogging.com) for bringing these thoughts to my attention last night.

When Twitter users put up a banner or post Follow Me, there is unprecedented power in those words.

We are witnessing a revolution on many fronts right before our eyes. A revolution of a nation, of people and of the mystique of microblogging – limiting to 140 characters.

This is not the first time it Twitter and microblogging have been at the forefront of news. Such means of communications were utilized to report an imprisionment and subsequent release in Egypt, an earthquake in China, a jet liner landing on the Hudson River, and now potentially the second Iranian revolution that many of us have witnessed.

Events in Iran started to unfold and the seams of iron fisted control began days ago when the election results were announced within a couple of hours. The fraud charges against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his main political party were almost immediate. How was it possible to declare a winner within hours of polls closing when tens of millions of ballots had been cast, sealed, and required hand counting? It is not possible.

When the protests began, main media coverage was present beaming signals and images to us. Even with a government order banning these demonstrations did not dispel the crowds. Police with batons racing through the crowd on motorcyles did nothing to break up days of protests.

Then the Iranian government pulled the plug on internet access and feeds. One thing they could not control nor confinscate was the tens of millions of mobile phones capable of passing on live images from the scene and live 140 character tweets from the throngs of users.

Twitter is indeed at the head of the pack in this revolution. Microblogging has come of age. Microblogging has become a tool that may just be the catalyst in over throughing a corrupt, defiant, and dangerous regime.

The Twitter thing, as mentioned, was brought to my attention last night. A friend who runs Microblogging.com sent a link that was quite amazing.

There was a scheduled Twitter mantainance that would have taken Twitter off-line for one hour. Hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of twitter users PLEADED for Twitter not to do this as Twitter was now the only true and viable means of getting overnight news out to the world from Tehran.

And Twitter obliged the cries of holding off.

Twitter and Iran stayed connected to the world.

President Barack Obama knows the power of Twitter and microblogging. So do his followers. As well as his staff.

And now I see an unusual headline:

US State Department Working With Twitter to Keep Service Up for Iranians

Elise Labott of CNN reports: “The halls of Foggy Bottom are ringing with the Tweets coming with Iran and the State Department is working to ensure they keep coming. Senior officials say the State Department is working with Twitter and other social networking sites to ensure Iranians are able to continue to communicate to each other and the outside world.”

Read full story: CNN

Laying before us is a revolution in the making of a goverment and of mobile wireless communication.

For the State Department to step in a supporting role to keep Twitter on line is revolutionary in itself. To me it is a green light giving the “go ahead” to topple the government of a regime that is not only anti-American and Israel. It is a regime that is so anti-anyone who does not think and speak using the party tone. This is truly an unprecedented manner in which the US Government supports the ousting of another government by supporting the opposition’s use of Twitter, social networking, microblogging, mobile and wireless media.

It was a few months ago when I read an established blogger stating that the mobile internet does not exist, the internet is one, and it was of no value except to those promoting it. Read that statement again.

mobile internet does not exit, there is only one internet, and it is of no value except to those promoting it.

This is paraphrased and suffer with me as I will not make a public spectacle of the person who blogged this. Suffice to  say, she has a tough go from “those that supported” the mobile internet.

It was only perhaps a month or so ago I made a pitch to a health care provider, now the fifth largest hospital chain in the USA, that they should be using Twitter to gather real time feedback from users of its facilities and to respond in real time to concerns and complaints. One person armed with the directory to each Risk Management and Customer Service personnel could immediately post the person to contact regarding the issue. REAL customer service in REAL TIME.

The Asst. Director of Marketing emailed back that the matter was discussed with his superior and they were not interested.

It wasn’t that they were not interested in my proposal.

There were not interested in Twitter at all. They saw no value to marketing via social networking. There was no perceived need to utilize Twitter as an external measure of customer satisfaction. There was no use for a microblogging service to exist in their handling of internal and external issues in real time as they arise.

Imagine as a customer you tweet about the un-necessary wait in the ER to be seen. A person responds back not only with a supporting tweet but within minutes a real live person from customer service is standing in front of them wanting to make their waiting more comfortable.

As an employee nurse, you are concerned about staffing issues and the nurse to patient ratios. You tweet about how you are incapable of giving the proper attention to the patients. No one cares. Yet you just tweeted this message to the entire world! Then comes a starnge tweet: it is a message to call an internal number. You call and a person in the Nursing Administration inquires what the issue is, where is the shortage, and replies “help is on the way.”

Imagine a new way of business.

Imagine a new way of customer service.

Imagine a new way of employee satisfaction and retention.

There is no imagination necessary as all these wonderful tools exists and are being utilized as I type this.

Imagine 140 characters texting their way to a Revolution.

Imagine the revolutionary changes these tools can make in your business.

In your life.