Apes will always need to groom each other, and Twitter is great for that. So while Twitter is important, a lot of what it’s used for today is not new content. It’s retweeting or sharing links to content outside of Twitter. Gestures like retweeting or “liking” something on Facebook are more akin to applause than to dialogue. I don’t just write for applause, I like to write to start a dialogue.

—Anil Dash, in a quick chat with the New York Times about blogs, anonymous comments and gov2.0.