That Malcolm Gladwell article

There's been a lot of response in the organizing worlds to that Malcolm Gladwell article from the other week, "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will not be Tweeted."

I think there are lots of great examples from the last few years of the importance of social networking being oversold (Twitter revolution in Moldova! Not!).

But this topic also often entails knocking down straw men: skeptics argue "Twitter isn't a replacement for talking to people, for old-fashioned organizing." Some of us respond, "We never said it is."

Gladwell used the civil rights movement as an example of how hierarchies work effectively. Critics -- see Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith -- argue that Gladwell is getting the history of the movement fairly wrong.