Berners-Lee: Twitter should be more 'sophisticated'

published 24 May 2011

Twitter may be one of the fastest growing social networks on the internet, but it seems one of the fathers of web technology isn't a fan.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and regular tech commentator, has slammed the service at a conference in London, claiming it was "not a place for reasoned discussion."

The director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was speaking at the "New Web" conference at The Royal Society, expressing his views that all social networks should communicate with one another to open up debates to more voices.

However, when tweeters were discussing net neutrality an issue close to his heart Berners-Lee claimed "all the tweets were extreme."

"Is Twitter going to be a part of [the future web]? We need something a bit more sophisticated," he added.

"Twitter is not really designed for middle of the way discussion. Something should be."

Berners-Lee recently fought the case for net neutrality at a Government roundtable, telling communications minister Ed Vaizey the internet should not have priority traffic but neutral access for all.

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.

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