One additional point about Twitter that hasn’t been addressed here is a ‘collective mentality’ movement happening in Twitter. Hashtags are becoming increasingly popular and there are people who actively participate or spread hashtags. You could also lump RT under this collective mentality where everyone is eeriely connected to each other almost like a borg (but not quite that advanced yet). Adding to this point, how Twitter is used in South East Asia (I’m not sure if it’s the same as in the US cause I’ve been really out of touch since I moved back ^^) is almost like an open forum. I have seen conversations take place on Twitter between 7-8 friends. Usually this is done thru the @ or when there are too many friends in the topic, a hashtag is then used.

I find it interesting that in both the articles you posted, none of these points were brought up.

Perhaps we use Twitter differently in South East Asia.