Twitter is a terrible solution to an intensive need. To use it is to constantly forgive its failings. But we do use it, because it provides an indispensable, instantaneous information stream.

How Twitter fails:

• Noise. A constant information stream with low relevance density. Some of this is intrinsic to the communication mode, but it's amplified by Twit culture.
• Chaos. Lots of ways to amass information, no way to organize it
• Usability. Nightmare interface.
• Reliability. Continual service outages and hiccups.

How Twitter succeeds:

• Brevity. Turns out, we can absorb more information from 140-word tweets than from 140-page white papers.
• Simplicity. You talk at people. Sometimes they talk back. No formatting options, no burden of conversation, no need (or opportunity) for clarification.
• Promiscuity. Twitter is the delta for many communication channels.
• Timeliness. The right mix of subscriptions can simulate an ideal news service.

Why do I care about this? As I see it, a resource that I continue to use even though it's annoying is a learning opportunity. My interest in Twitter is this: How can T2P meet the same human communication needs that Twitter does without failing in the same ways. Or can we?

We have always believed that people in governance, risk, and compliance positions want to communicate and have a lot to say. Facilitating that communication is part of our mission. Another part is providing a practice context for those communications. And yet a third part is to contribute to those communicaitons with internally produced research. 

Although we've seen a measure of success in some of these goals, we're clearly missing something that Twitter, for all of its failings, does very well. In essence, I think we need to find more ways to let you be brilliant briefly...maybe even casually. We need to offer more communication channels and mechanisms for the aggregations and consolidation of community members' insight and wisdom.

I'm very interested in hearing what kinds of new community channels you'd like to see on this site. Do you use Twitter? Would something like that, but focused on information governance, be good here? Should we have forums or discussion boards? Do you use the communication options available to you through your profile pages? And why, or why not?

You can post your response in the comments section for this article (click here, scroll down). Or write me directly at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .