Technology
For Progress

Twitter

The value of the hashtag:
1. NetSquared Conference: - T4P helped out during NetSquared earlier this year by live tweeting and live video blogging. At the time, I was a fairly new twitter user. I had to somehow figure out what the heck RT stood for. After getting familiar with the interface and the workflow, I began to tweet out to the world interesting things that were being said by the presenters at NetSquared. Everyone at the conference was instructed to use the hash tag #n2y4 with each tweet. I had downloaded TweetDeck in order to easily post updates. This multiple column format of this client quickly encourages you to create columns with customized content, for example, a twitter search. So I had my normal twitter timeline in one column, and the #n2y4 search in another column. Following the #n2y4 hashtag, I saw what everyone in my conference room was posting as well as other conference rooms. The benefit of the hashtag should be clear: you don't need to necessarily be followed or even following people to get value out of twitter. People I didn't know were reading my tweets, and in fact, retweeting them. Indeed, these people had massive amounts of followers. Maybe those followers will retweet as well and push the social graph even further.
Unification via one way communication

T4P was one of the lucky few to make it into the crowded City Hall for the Kingsbridge Armory Hearing. Most were stuck outside in the cold. Only one person in the crowd had a twitter client on their phone. They knew about @ourarmory(who I was tweeting as), and shouted each tweet out to the crowd as they came in from me. I was told by people in the crowd that this created a sense of unity with those inside and kept everyone outside motivated and in good spirits until the end of the hearing later that day.