Why is Twitter a Form of Social Intelligence?

Two weeks ago, I attended the Carnegie Mellon University 2009 Commencement Ceremony. The keynote speaker was Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. Towards the end of his speech (see embedded video below), he prompted students to work in groups and use Twitter as a form of social intelligence. I was a bit surprised to hear this term being assigned to Twitter. I was ok with the social part. Where does intelligence come in though?

So far, we all know and love Twitter for the fact that we can discover and share news, blog posts, links, tips, pictures–pretty much anything–in real-time. What Eric Schmidt pointed out is that it is these exact qualities of real-time discovering and sharing that are actually creating a form of social intelligence. Twitter is like a super-brain that everyone can use. Everyone can contribute new knowledge and everyone can search and extract this knowledge. To me, this definitely sounds like “social intelligence”. So, why Twitter and not Google? Well, Twitter is real-time and is driven by people who decide what is popular and worthwhile instead of an algorithm. These two factors make a big difference. Let’s drill down to some more reasoning of why Twitter is a form of social intelligence.

Get answers from real people in seconds.

Depending on how big your Twitter network is, you can ask a question and get answers in an interactive manner. You can harness the knowledge of a large group to expand your own knowledge.

Search for the answers among billions of tweets.

Ever since twitter made search possible, it released the power and accumulated knowledge and opinions of billions of tweets to everyone. Depending on what you need do to know, twitter is currently more efficient than Google.

Tweet once, share forever.

Yes. Twitter is the easiest way to share information forever. In 140 characters you can share anything you have in mind and contribute to what the vast cloud of what will be termed “social intelligence” from now on.

Retweet. That’s how you promote knowledge.

Useful tweets are the ones that get retweeted and through this, reach more people. Tweets that do not contribute to social knowledge do no travel as much in the twittersphere. In other words, through retweeting, Twitter is able to promote valuable knowledge continuously.

As more people use Twitter, the amount of knowledge and intelligence generated by it will grow. This growth is socially driven and the result is “social intelligence”.

Go to 9:03 for the part where Eric Schmidt talks about Twitter and social intelligence.