Just read Danah Boyd’s excellent blog post on the twitter “backchannel” phenomenon and the difficulty it presents for speakers who are placed in a very awkward position. Her extremely negative experience at Web2.0 Expo illustrates how difficult it is for public speakers to cope with live (and often unmoderated) twitterstreams onstage behind them. The shift in the structure of this social discourse does not offer anything of significant benefit for either the speaker or the audience. Danah’s experience captures it better than I can and for the full scoop, head on over to her blog and read about it.  I, for one, certainly hope this is not the future of public speaking. And I’m no luddite!

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