I use twitter extensively all day long, and I still agree with Gladwell. The author of this post seems to misunderstand Gladwell's point. Of course you can make new friends and business contacts online, including via twitter, which become strong real life bonds. But can you get 6,000 of your followers to face down riot police ? Not likely. Gladwell is not talking about establishing a few dozen close contacts a year. He's talking about motivating vast numbers of people to make serious sacrifice and commitment around important issues. As it stands we can barely get enough people to vote.