I watched the new Conan O’Brien show for the first time last night. Having seen how Jimmy Fallon has identified his target audience through the inclusion of any and all social networking apps and sites , I was curious to see how Conan would deal with this – he was either going to be contrary or complementary – and it was likely one of the most important decisions for NBC because it was going to be huge as to who was the target demographic for the timeslots for both shows – and consequently the advertising dollars that can be pursued.

So when I saw Conan go full-thrust with silly Twitter-themed graphics and an over the top voice over to create an almost-parody segment that featured the most mundane comments from celebrities (and thereby identifiying that he and Jimmy collectively were trying to target the 20 to 50 crowd (because the 35 to 50 crowd know what Twitter is but don’t follow the same social networking conventions)), I saw for the first time what Twitter’s future is. But first, let’s applaud NBC for trying to be the first to cover all age groups in the late night slot – Jay Leno’s show will capture the 50+ audience (who can no longer stay up past 11) and Conan and Jimmy will take it from there. Impressive plan.

And now back to the future of Twitter. Well, not necessarily Twitter – let’s call it the future of one to many relationships.

First, let’s agree upon what it is not going to be. It is not going to be a serious social networking utility for ‘everyman’. There just isn’t enough important things for people to share en masse that it can sustain itself that way- not even for the rambunctious twenty-somethings. There will be the isolated case of PR- usefulness, such as like Conan identified – the celebrity chat that fans will follow regardless of how it is disseminated (although if I owned a teen magazine I’d be very nervous right now). (as an aside I think that Twitter will increase the use of therapists as the self-esteem of every teenager will be impacted the first time they tweet and realize that they were just mastur-tweeting, and have no friends).

End of sidetrack and clever attempt to fit in wordy sentences.

Let’s zoom out and have a macro look at the main impact that the internet has had on our civilization – it has changed our ability to communicate, and especially has changed  the businesses that controlled the communication channels (and to a certain extent what was on our radar as far as what was worthy of thinking about). The days of newspaper and television news are gone. No longer will these channels exist because the second they have actually produced ‘news’, it will be no longer relevant. Some could argue that this transition of power is the reason that every opportunity to ‘ramp up’ and sensationalize an event, like OJ Simpon’s famous white car chase, or any tragedy if you’re watching CNN, exists – they can’t be first with all the news but they can certainly turn tragedy in to a big, on-going, extravagant production.

But, they have to keep re-building the drama to keep people watching. Have you ever heard about the declining numbers of people who watch rocket launches for space travel? It was huge once but suddenly not as impressive the 25th time. And this can work to the detriment of ‘news’ channels because they aren’t able to reflect our changing societies. For example, we’ve all heard of the recent swine flu outbreak – but not for a month now – how can that be? Its still important – the rotation of disease will likely make it headline news again as the second wave overcomes people in a few more weeks. But it isn’t ‘news-worthy’ until that happens- at least in the traditional ‘news’ channels.

And that is how micro-blogging will be the future of current events. We don’t need the dramatic story for 12 hours straight. We want the facts, and we want to know more about the planet we live on, and the communities we live in. I believe that Twitter and other micro-blogging apps will quickly turn in to a new competition for honest, reliable, original ‘news’ content like we’ve never seen before.

It could change the world’s economy by drawing attention to the things that people want, and not what lobbyists and advertisers control. And it’ll change how and who we do business.