alexandraerin

The interesting thing about the Twitter chat (she said in between actually working on the website) is how it's forcibly democratic and egalitarian.

For those whose Twit Fu is even weaker than mine, everybody on Twitter is broadcasting on the same frequency. People simulate topics/channels using "hashtags", which is a hash sign and a keyword, and then you can run a search on that to see everybody who has tweeted about it in the last little bit. Some people use client programs that do running updates, like an auto-refreshing chatroom, but unlike a chatroom there's no way to keep people out of the discussion... anybody can run a search and anybody can type the tag on their post.

I only found out about this because someone I'm watching on Twitter posted and the #writechat tag interested me so I searched it, and jumped in when I saw the topics of discussion were Of Interest to me. I think I pulled a few other people in, in a similar fashion.

Anyway, because anyone can see the tag and join in, the conversation's not restricted to a single viewpoint. The individual who "hosts" (really, jumpstarts) the writer chat circle seems to represent a very by-the-book industry oriented viewpoint: if you want to be a writer, you pay someone to edit your manuscript before you try to hire an agent and then the agent gets you a deal and so on. I'm sure that works for some people, but as another person pointed out, there are agents who don't want to see edited manuscripts, they want to know exactly what they're dealing with in the raw.

There is no universal approach that will work for every person in every case, and so a diversity of voices and viewpoints is a good thing.

I did get the distinct impression that not everybody thought so, though. I got a distinct vibe from some people that they felt applecarts were being upset by the presence of radical dissent. (Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!) But the nature of Twitter is such that even if they don't like it they can't do anything about it.

Anybody who wants to take advantage of its open nature is going to have to cope with everything that openness entails. And if they really can't coexist with the conflicting viewpoint, well... they're probably not going to stick around themselves.