Please watch this video. It is a network analysis of  an hour's worth of  Twitter messages ('tweets') originating from Egypt, each one containing the hastags #jan25 and #egypt. Hundreds of people came together in an hour.

I'm struck by the biological imagery of this animation. It starts out looking like a blastula, an early stage in embryogenisis when a fertilized cell begins dividing. The network builds a wall and structure. Quickly thereafter, the graph takes the form of a sphere. It's easy to imagine an embryo inside.

Remember each node is a person with a brain, eyes and fingers. Using the 'grid' (neurons?) they fire messages to each other. And this brings to mind another organic structure: a brain. This Egyptian Twitter-brain self-forms. It pulses and moves.

It is human energy

 

Imagine if this brain could focus on a problem and solve it. Imagine if the 'nodes' came together to design something entirely new. Imagine if this brain existed inside  your company...

Well, it does. It's called enterprise collaboration. It is your new enterprise social tools. It is your iPhone. It is YouTube. It is you. It is your colleagues.

And by being here, reading this, you are one those nodes. Congratulations! You are among the first to walk into your company's Tahrir Square. The more people who find you and follow you inside your company, the more creativity you'll have, the more problems you can conquer. This is fast. This is real business transformation.

Go swarm!