I've never really thought of twitter as a social network more of a collection of grandstands or soapboxes or something all with people holding megaphones with a 10 second limit all yelling at the same time and sometimes the people around your megaphone will yell your message out to the people near their soap boxes. The more important you are, the taller your soapbox and and the farther the sound goes, but your megaphone still only works for 10 seconds at a time.