Point: Olivia Mitchell

Twitter is becoming mainstream, and meeting organizers need to harness it to improve events.

There's no doubt that Twittering during meetings and presentations changes their dynamic. But if meeting professionals embrace Twitter as another method of engagement, there are benefits to the speaker, the audience, and the overall output of the conference or meeting.

It's easy to jump to the conclusion that using Twitter is distracting. But many people report that tweeting helps them engage with meeting content at a deeper level. Now everyone can be an active participant. An analysis of tweets during a presentation at the SXSW 2009 conference showed that 75 percent of them were direct quotes, comments, questions, or additional links. Only 4.4 percent were off-topic completely.

With Twitter, no longer do you have to guess how a presentation or panel discussion is going. You're able to monitor what attendees are thinking, and speakers can change course and adapt to meet the needs of the audience.

Twitter also facilitates networking. Being at a conference where you know no one or only a few people can be intimidating. But when people tweet, they get to know each other virtually, and can then introduce themselves physically.

Additionally, tweeting by the audience during a conference session sends content rippling far beyond the conference walls. It raises awareness of the event, broadcasts the highlights, and makes people wish they were there - thereby making it more likely that they'll register for next year's event.

As Twitter becomes more mainstream, it will be infiltrating more meetings. Prepare for it and manage it, and your conferences and meetings will be richer as a result.

Olivia Mitchell helps people become more confident and effective presenters, through training courses in New Zealand and via her blog (www.speakingaboutpresenting.com).

Counterpoint: Steve Rubel

Twitter has peaked. It's time to start looking for the next big thing in online social media.

In the last six months, Twitter has gone nuclear. More than that, it's peaked, and might be on its way out as a dominant social-media application. There are three reasons why.

First, celebrities have flocked to Twitter. Just six months ago, the list of the top 100 users on Twitter read like a who's who of geeks, which is what made the service a draw for many early adopters. Now, the top 100 looks like People magazine. Twitter is losing its geek cred - and, historically, as the geeks go, so goes social media.

The second reason why Twitter is peaking is that it's disorganized. Replies aren't threaded, so users don't feel they have to respond to every tweet, and there are no comments to moderate. At first, this helped draw people in. But what was once a feature may now be seen as a bug.

Finally, Twitter is a mile wide but an inch deep. The entire service is built on brevity, and it supports anonymity. But as Twitter continues to grow and people crave tweets from personalities they trust, I wonder if they won't want a deeper relationship - one with less anonymity.

To be clear, as long as Twitter maintains a following, I think every meeting should incorporate it as a way to converse with attendees, speakers, and exhibitors. But it's also important to remember that few if any online communities have had staying power. As blogging and RSS feeds crested, they were replaced to varying degrees by Twitter - which itself is now poised to fall victim to the same trend. You need to look for the next big thing - as applications like Facebook, Friendfeed, Tweetdeck, and others battle to become your one place for social media.

Steve Rubel is senior vice president and director of insights for Edelman Digital. Read his blog on emerging technologies' impact on marketing at www.micropersuasion.com.