[This post is part of an ongoing Profile of a Contemporary Conduit series on Jadaliyya that seeks to highlight distinct voices primarily in and from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.]
Jadaliyya (J): What do you think are the most gratifying aspects of Tweeting, and Twitter?
Ahmed Al Omran (AO): The most gratifying aspect of Twitter is probably the network. The people you meet and the access to a wide array of information and opinions that come through this network of people have become essential to my work and my life.
J: What are some of the political/social/cultural limits you’ve encountered using the platform?
AO: Twitter’s limit of 140 characters per message, while it enforces brevity and spontaneity, does not allow for complex and well thought-out debate. There have been many, many cases in which I wished someone would take his/her time to flesh out the ideas they are firing on Twitter as longer, well-written blog posts that can be used later as a point of reference. Because Twitter is pretty much real-time and lacks a proper search engine, a lot of what is said there now seems to be fleeting bursts that get lost quickly.
J: In your experience and use of Twitter, do you feel it helps mobilize or disorganize? Focus or crowd? Is it manageable or noisy? Can it help persuade and mobilize or does it turn everyone into a voyeur and spectator?
AO: Twitter is a tool. It is what you make of it. It can be any of these things depending on how you use it. That being said, I wish there were more advanced tools to help power users better manage the amazing flow of information coming through the service. But Twitter seems to be more interested in growing its user base than helping power users to take more advantage of the service. At the same time, Twitter’s API restrictions mean third-party developers cannot develop such advanced tools.
J: Do you feel it has made a positive difference in how we disseminate and/or consume information? Are there any drawbacks for a wide-scale preoccupation with 140 characters?
AO: I think Twitter has made a positive difference when it comes to dissemination and distribution of information due to the simplicity of the service. I think this simplicity is what made Twitter become popular and gave it this great power as a vehicle for new information. Nowadays, news first break on Twitter. However, as I said earlier, this simplicity and 140-character limit mean that it is difficult to engage in discussion about complex topics.
J: In what ways has Twitter helped you as a source of information? How do you sift through that information and determine its credibility?
AO: Any time I’m working on my laptop, TweetDeck would be running in the left side of my screen showing tweets from the 2090 people I follow on Twitter. They provide me with a combination of news, interesting thoughts, and fun. These people have become sources of varying degrees of credibility. To determine this credibility, you look at the people who follow them and you assess their track record. That process happens over a long period of time, because even the best sources can get it wrong sometimes. The important thing is that when mistakes happen, people need to come forward and be transparent about them.
J: How would you assess the level of activity in the Saudi blogosphere?
AO: Much of the conversation that used to take place in blogs now seem to be taking place on Twitter, which has become a major platform for Saudis to talk and debate their issues. The latest numbers show that there are 50 million tweets exchanged in Saudi Arabia per month. As more and more Saudis joined the site over the past year, the conversation there has become increasingly reflective of society and the public discourse in the country.
[Ahmed Al Omran blogs at Saudi Jeans and tweets at @ahmed.]