I am, being a knowledge worker, very oriented towards content that provides me with information. News shows, educational programming, and encyclopedias. Great stuff.

Most content today, on television for example, doesn’t fit that categorization. It tends to be “soft” content. Game shows, sitcoms, crime dramas and the like tend not to provide you with information, but exercise your emotional triggers.

Twitter is such a platform. It displays the current activity for an account holder. Purely soft, and personal content. Great for voyeurs. Great for just peeping into others’ lives because you have nothing better to do. I hate it.

However, not all human activity needs to be strictly personal. Twitter can fulfill an important role in the commercial arena by keeping co-workers, and bosses, abreast of one’s location, achievements (sales) and current obstacles. Its use in public companies will present an interesting legal quagmire as the data will need to be archived in order to fulfill Sarbannes-Oxley requirements.

In addition, there’s no need to limit accounts merely to humans. Businesses could use twitter accounts to post press releases and events. News outlets can use twitter in addition to RSS feeds to report news items. Factories can use twitter to report current production output and shipping info. Bug trackers can use twitter to report the status of bugs. Product teams can use twitter to report the current build status of projects to team members (and managers).

Just as television is an enabling technology to provide either beneficial or harmful content to its viewers, twitter can serve to provide immediate information on which critical business decisions can be made.

Whoever said the earth is slowing down wasn’t looking at the important stuff. The world just got a tad faster.