It’s the age old question: If you could have any five people over for dinner, who would they be? For me the answer is:

• My favourite philosopher (or interpreter of philosophy): Alain de Botton (@alaindebotton)
• My favourite porn star: Sophie Moone (@SophieMoone)
• The president of The United States of America: Barack Obama (@BarackObama)
• Universal man of controversy and sheikh of tweak: Shane Warne (@warne888), and
• Lead singer from one of my favourite bands: Zack de la Rocha (Rage Against The Machine) (@ZackdelaRocha – this one is unconfirmed though as he’s never tweeted.)

That’s some list of people in my opinion. And you know what? I get to hear from most of them every day. The power of Twitter is that I can connect with some of the most prominent people in the world on the topics that I care about. What I left out above includes the subject matter experts from the technologies I work with (Enterprise Content Management and Android), my favourite journalists and people involved in defending Australia and the world from censorship.

I’m sorry real friends but you really need to pick your game up. We’re reaching our quarter life crisis and what have we got to show? A sports presenter, a PhD candidate scientist, content management specialist at the United Nations, and a model. I know this is harsh as many of you are world specialists in your chosen fields but I think we can do better!

So the real power of twitter is that it lets us connect straight to the people we are interested in. Facebook is sort of trialing this – you can like our favourite bands and brands but I don’t think it’s really the same. I don’t feel the same connection. Let’s face it, Facebook is for friends and should keep trying to improve on that market. It’s probably a pretty good market too as most people I’ve met have friends.

And Twitter? Is it going to take off because we can choose friends so much better than our own? Maybe not. Twitters big problem is that you can choose your friends, but not what they talk about. And most people talk a fair bit of garbage. I think Twitter might have a chance of fixing this though. I’d love to see a channel feature where you could just connect to the relevant material until you think you want to know more about a person. I know I already post a fair bit more to Twitter than I do to Facebook and if they can get some focus on relevancy they might become
a real power.

Either way happy communicating!

P.S. If any of the people on my dinner wish list can make dinner some time then just drop me a line. My calendar is always open.