A Lesson in Character Development

By Paula Wasley

In a dark corner of a bar here, a woman types a message on her BlackBerry. A few feet away, a man with a beer in hand pulls out his iPhone to check his Facebook account. At other late-night gatherings such behavior might be seen as awkward, antisocial, or ill-mannered. In this crowd, what looks like high-tech tuning-out is actually tuning-in, and the ultimate sign of social currency.

The scene is Washington's Twestival (a contraction of "twitter" and "festival"), where more than 200