Evan Williams says Twitter fundamental to government

Yeah, that's basically his job, isn't it?

Perhaps, but he does seem to have a point.

If nothing else, the Obama administration seems to agree with William's comments. They have publicly signalled the importance they attach to Twitter (e.g during the Iran election trouble last year)

I really don't think that's what he's saying. It looks to me like he's saying that social networking is going to be fundamental to government. Social networking is basically the vector by which the Internet influences politics. Reasonable people can argue about whether the Internet is going to be fundamental politics. It's not a crazy premise.

Twitter is currently the simplest social network we have. Unlike Facebook, which wants a profile and is built around aggressive network-building, Twitter requires zero initial effort. You join, you start publishing, and people either find you or they don't. I see the Twitter angle on this, too.

Boiling down political discussion to 140-character tweets? I guess that's no worse than what we used to have...