Why I Love Twitter
This has been an interesting week at a company that has its share of interesting weeks. When the storm around you reaches full fury it lays bare what you have at the core. Confronting that here and now at Twitter I find the core has enduring power and value far beyond the ability of any storm to erode. I love Twitter, not because the aspirations we have for it are easy to achieve, or even define. I love Twitter because it matters, because the people building it matter, and because the people whom it connects matter.
Twitter brings every voice to the world and the world to every voice. Twitter is the potential energy of human connection brought to life. Never before have we had the ability, controlled by no one and every one, to speak and connect and live in each moment with no barriers. Never before have freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of association had a physical manifestation, a materialization into a medium each of us can use. It is hard to define precisely because it is unique, but there is no doubt that it is real.
If humans are to solve the many problems we have yet to solve, to live in this world with the care and respect it requires, to live with each other in an attitude of love and understanding, then we must have this ability to speak and connect to each other. It must be alive in each moment and it must have no barriers. This medium must extend to all people, all places, all expression. We must have Twitter.
The power to see and hear and start to understand each other, to know that we are not alone even when surrounded, to know that we are not forgotten, is the power that will help take us from tribes fighting over their own fears to a mosaic of rich humanity secure in its shared strength. That power will permit us to evolve and shape the entire texture of human culture in ways we cannot yet imagine and to reinforce it with a strength no cataclysm will be able to erase.
For this Twitter is essential forever. That horizon makes all the difference. On such a marathon it’s nice to be comfortable and for the crowd to be cheering and for the wind to be at your back, but marathons are won in the long miles where the crowd is thin, the hills rise, and the rain blows sideways into your face. Those miles are where purpose and character fuse into perseverance. Those miles have a beautiful focus, for your entire being is recruited into the simple but powerful act of taking one more stride toward the ultimate goal. To join many others with the same purpose creates an unstoppable tide. History shows that no force on Earth can resist such a tide. No matter how hard each step such perseverance toward that which truly matters is a great and joyful thing.
Twitter’s journey is one stretched across time rather than miles. Each day, each hour and minute, are imperative to advance our purpose, but months and quarters and years are only way stations along a much longer path. These milestones matter but it is the goal that makes them worth it. Such a journey can only happen, can only be contemplated, as an enterprise involving many people. To work on something that can and should endure beyond any one of us, with others that share this passion and commitment, provides the deepest satisfaction.
It is a remarkable privilege to be at a point in time and space and human context where I can apply my energy and join many others in the same purpose. I love Twitter because it matters, because the people building it matter, and because the people whom it connects matter, now and forever. So long as I can help us take one more stride, and then another, I will.
