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Twitter, as a Web 2.0 app, is often confusing at first glance, because the typical Twitter-user homepage resembles gibberish; an effect that comes from reading only one side of a person having many conversations, interspersed with random thoughts, links and reports of mundane minutia – 140 character microblogging. Even clicking “with others” isn’t much help as the asynchronous nature of the exchanges make these conversations very, very, difficult to follow.

This has led Dave Davison of Thoughts Illustrated, who has great experience in high tech angel investing, to ask of Twitter, “What is the Return On Attention? (ROA)” and ultimately, he came to the conclusion that twittering, unfiltered, is mostly attention-wasting noise.  As a consequence, Dave now uses one such (multiplatform) filter, Friendfeed and no longer twitters.

So then, what good is Twitter? Here’s the “Return on Attention” that I’ve found from using Twitter:

Conversation Within An Existing Network:

I kick around ideas, shoot the breeze or just stay in the loop with what is happening with Shloky, John Robb, Michael Tanji, Selil from SWC,  Adam Elkus, Charles Cameron and Shane Deichman. Additionally, Chirol, Sean Meade, Curtis of Dreaming5GW, Critt Jarvis and Dan of Tdaxp are alo on Twitter but “tweet” very irregularly.

Note that many of us have actually met in person, some more than once and/or have been interacting online together for years. This is where Twitter is going to yield the most value, given the 140 character limit of the “tweets”; a shared understanding is necessary to maximize the utility of this app.

Network Building:

Adding to the above group, which has clearly defined interests in 4GW, strategy, intel, COIN, futurism and technology, teaching and writing, was relatively easy. Joining us after a time were Fantomplanet, Jeffrey Carr of IntelFusion, Sandbaggerone, Fester of The NewsHoggers and Powerweirdo ( of many sites). The signal to noise ratio in this group is very high – and what noise exists, social chatter, joking, etc. serves psychologically as a positive reinforcer.

Gateway/ Breadcrumb Trail:

When I “follow” someone on Twitter or if they elect to “follow” me, I eventually get around to checking out their website, blog or links with greater scrutiny. This is how I found Jessica Margolin’s Solvation blog, Carr’s IntelFusion and started reading some of the blogs of the hi-tech/Web 2.0 gurus and entrepreneurs who “follow” me but for whom I mostly don’t reciprocate on Twitter because, like Robert Scoble, their combined sheer volume of “tweets” would drown everyone else out.  I have excepted  David Armano and Scoble; the former, because I have been repeatedly  impressed with his command of visual information and he keeps his tweets to a reasonable number and Scoble because, despite his maniacal aspect, he is a “hub” for that entire subculture and occasionally posts up high value links like this.

I pretty much find something interesting every day on Twitter or by somebody who uses Twitter – like this piece on 5GW. It’s a useful app, if you accept the inherent limitations of the platform or if you intend to bring your entire network with you and speed up the  conversation.

Edward De Bono is a longtime guru in the field of creativity, specializing in horizontal thinking ( De Bono prefers the older terminology he coined, “Lateral Thinking“). Hat tip to David Armano ( on Twitter).

Through Twitter, I’ve become familiar with Jeffrey Carr’s excellent blog IntelFusion which covers a range of topics of great interest to readers here. Several recent posts that have caught my eye:

Unrestricted Warfare, the Chinese Box, and the game of Go

In 1999, a seminal work on Chinese military strategy was published by two Senior Colonels of the Peoples Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), SrCol Qiao Liang and SrCol Wang Xiangsui, entitled Chaoxian zhan (translated as “Warfare that exceeds boundaries”).

….In July, 2002, the Asia Times printed a new article by the two Colonels “Chinese box approach to international conflict“. In it, they discuss China’s uber strategy in dealing with specific international issues:

“It is Chinese practice to attack an issue with a framework larger than the issue itself. When a crisis occurs, Chinese leaders first detach from it temporally and spacially. They spend time thinking about the issue before action, thus allowing more room for maneuver in the future. This is somewhat like playing with a magic box: first you pack the specific problem and related factors into a box and then fit it into larger boxes with related problems in different levels. Finally, you come up with a framework of highest generality to harness the whole situation.”

In this article, the authors later allude to the Chinese game of Weiqi (more commonly called by its Japanese name “Go”) and the strategy of the “idle piece”.

Nuclear black market still operating in the DRC

Ever since WWII, when the Democratic Republic of the Congo provided the raw uranium ore for U.S. production of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, various States interested in acquiring nuclear weapons have been attracted to the Congo’s relatively lax export controls for uranium found in its Cobalt and Copper ore. The most recent incident just occured a few days ago :

Security forces in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Katanga province have intercepted a truck transporting radioactive mineral ore bound for export, local authorities said on Friday. The truck, carrying 30 tonnes of copper and cobalt ore for Chinese-run firm Hua-Shin Mining, was stopped at an inspection checkpoint near Kolwezi, one of Congo’s biggest copper belt mining towns, on Wednesday.

Last November, another attempt to smuggle uranium resulted in the radioactive ore being dumped into a river causing serious health concerns for the surrounding population.

Read these posts in full at IntelFusion.

Heard about Quotably on Twitter, wasn’t sure what it was until I came across this post by Gerrit at Smart Mobs.

Web 2.0 has evolved to the point where we need special search apps just to manage our social networking apps. Actually, what I really need is a  securely encrypted “universal remote” app for all the platforms I’m using or would like to use.

UPDATE:

Reader and twitter compadre Sandbaggerone also suggests Friendfeed.

Blogfriend Charles Cameron spotted this post by Flowing Data that has visualizations of social networking on Twitter.