I was on twitter this evening and I overheard something interesting.

To quote the to be unnamed Twitterite:

Shel Israel wants to elect officials in twitterland.

In my opinion microblogging services like Twitter can be used for many things. It’s a tool, its an infrastructure where we can create mini communities, or private messaging systems. Twitter is versatile in that we can do a lot of different things with it. But in an of itself it’s not a community. It’s the building blocks for other communities, not just tech communities.

While I believe Shel wants to elect ‘tech officials’ I think Twitter is much bigger than the tech community. It’s a place to create relationships on a different level. its a place to idea stream, its a place to collaborate. It’s an infrastructure to build other communities but it’s not an end in and of itself. And there’s no point in electing a Mayor of The Water Pipes atleast not in my universe. It’s like electing a Mayor of the Cable Company.