I’m beginning to think we’ve hit a new low in the interactive business but I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. Twittering is all the rage and I’m still not sure why. I’ve never considered myself an early-adopter of anything; however, I’m also far from a luddite.
Alright, so I was late to the blogging movement and only took an active posture with LinkedIn and Facebook in the last 12 months, but I’ve been involved with the Web since it’s early rise over a decade ago and never have I felt so alien to a new form of communication before. Twittering is an obsession I can’t yet understand.
Has our sense of self become so distorted and inwardly focused that we actually think people care about everything we say and do? Tweeters tell me I’m wrong — that I’m glib and haven’t yet seen the promise of this newfangled form of communication. Like e-mail before it, perhaps we’re watching the next true digital utility mature before our eyes.
I’m an active multi-tasker. In fact, like many of my brethren in this field I’ve typed e-mails on my computer while simultaneously texting on my mobile phone and holding a ‘live’ conversation with more than one person in my office. But Tweets have taken multi-tasking to a new level. They’re leading a parallel existence. Present, but not really there. Constantly telling their Twittering brothers and sisters everything they’re doing while their actually doing it. It’s kinda weird.
Perhaps a longitudinal observation of Twitter streams reveals hidden marketing secrets not readily apparent to lay people like me. Or, as my friend the Toad points out, maybe it will lead to a forum for experts. You sign up to receive tweets from experts in various areas of your choosing and they provide you with a certain number of expert tweets during the day. Links and/or advice.
At this point though, I’m not very hopeful. When I look at the common thread, I’m hard pressed to believe there’s something magical here. Tell me what value a Tweet like this one has…
Raz1: Taking the A Train downtown about 15 minutes ago
Raz1: Off the train..woofing a burrito. Tastes good, but it’s got a kick about 5 minutes ago
Raz1: That burrito made my belly loco. Sweat cascading down my forehead. Need to hit the boy’s room before heading out to a party about 2 minutes ago
Tweets, I’m not trying to douse kerosine on a fire. Nor am I attempting to prolong a dialogue that appears to be active on most blogs today; however, I am genuinely interested in what real value you see in this form of communications. To clarify, by ‘real’, I mean value to a marketer.
Please add comments and discuss.
Stumble It!
Brad: Thanks for the link love.I definitely had the same initial reaction you did and didn’t use it much the first month or so. But then I started getting followed (and following) people who had something useful to say. LInks to articles I was interested in. Observations that were funny. We slowly became friends and now Twitter is how I actually get in touch with most of them. (You can private or direct message people if you don’t want the world to see it.) It’s fun and I feel like I have a community there. And if someone I don’t know that well is giving me burrito consumption updates, I just unfollow them.
There was a lot of talk this weekend at Blogger Social (www.blogger-social.com) (e.g. Nerd Prom) about how to use Twitter for marketers with everything from my pay-per-tweet view to using it to provide instant information (e.g. Use code ERF456 and get 20% off at Starbucks between 10 and 2 today) or to have conversations with customers. For instance, a friend and I were discussing something and mentioned Zappos tangentially- within 10 minutes, the CEO of Zappos was following both of us. (Seems he’s a big Twittter fan.
But go on Twitter and follow me and I will return. It’s http://twitter.com/tangerinetoad
Also, check out these two links that explain other people’s love of Twitter
http://www.ianschafer.com/2008/04/07/why-and-how-i-use-twitter/
http://www.adrants.com/2008/04/twitter-will-trump-facebook.php
Brad! Hey there. Long time no see. Hope all is well.
Here’s my thinking on Twitter (or any vehicle that allows people to sort into social bubbles).
For me Twitter is a communications tool between me and my POKE New Yorkers. It’s new. It’s kinda fun. And for one reason or another people follow me as well. I assume bc whatever I have to say to my POKERs seems to be valuable to them too? Truthfully, I think people take all of this shit way too seriously. Twitter is a hobby. It’s the gadget du jour. We’ll chew it up and move on. It will sell for a zillion bucks and some other shiny object will get our attention. Yay.
There’s a dark underbelly however.
Ever since Muds, Moos, useNET, IRC and the dawn o’ the interweb, people have been grouping together with those who think like them. Nicolas Carr cites from one study in his book “The Big Switch” that 90 percent of the links/ideas/etc originating within the online sub-community stay within the larger community it subscribes to.
The end result? Islands of like-minded people, increasingly sure there is only one right answer and that they’re in sole possession of it.
I fear this click-iness is the “expert group” Tangerinetoad is referring to. Part of me feels to me more like the destruction of what the web’s creators intended the internet it to be rather than a giant leap forward. On a macro level we all speak of sharing and community as though the cross-channels are always open. But they are only open from the standpoint of the social-networker looking out. It is human-nature (and thereby community-nature) to aggregate into like-minded bubbles and groups. Blech. It’s inter-death by a thousand cuts.
tom@madewithcomputers.com
i came here b/c someone linked to it in twitter.
‘nuf said.
z
Wednesday, April 9, 2008 – 04:33 PM
If you’ll forgive me for promoting a blog post of my own, I actually mentioned this yesterday[1] over on my blog. The short version is that while 90% of what comes up in my Twitter feed is crap, the other 10% strikes me as having substantial potential value if one is willing to put in a little mental effort to sift through the stream.
Here’s a contrived example: A pretty typical example of the kind of apparently pointless trivia that pops up on twitter might be somebody posting “aw, man, I have crazy diarrhea today” is pretty much worthless (and kinda disgusting). On the other hand, a sudden flood(ahem) of people ALL posting that they are having unpleasant bowel symptoms might be useful, especially if there were some way to correlate locations, which is really where the post on my blog was headed. (“hey, look, there’s some kind of epidemic suddenly popping up in Western Oklahoma…remind me not to get takeout while I’m driving through there tomorow.”)
[1] http://www.bigroom.org/wordpress/?p=129
Wednesday, April 9, 2008 – 04:52 PM
Oh, yeah, and as a preceding post mentions, I also ended up here because it popped up on Twitter. Because you used the word “brewing” in the message, amusingly enough.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008 – 04:53 PM
As a reporter, I appreciate skepticism. I approached Twitter doubting its usefulness. I found that it’s pretty effective way of sharing and distributing content. It also ended up becoming a way for me to develop story ideas, connect with sources and distribute and gain feedback for my stories. Is it an unalloyed good? No, nothing really is. As Toad noted, lots of things can be annoying on Twitter. It’s like when we first got email and people would forward every joke. Or how it took years for people to learn cell-phone manners. (Hello?! I’m in the elevator! Hello?!) I also suffer from the constant partial-attention disorder it feeds.
I’m equally uncomfortable with the narcissistic impulses Twitter taps. But I put my name on stuff for a reason, so I must be OK with it on some level. The people who want 16,000 followers, I don’t get.
Try it for a couple of weeks. Twitter’s benefits are hard to explain in the abstract. You might not like it — plenty of people don’t — but you might find it useful and somewhat fun. Besides, @bradkay is available.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008 – 04:53 PM
Great to see you’ve got traction on this Brad.
@Ajello: Actually, I wasn’t thinking of the “Twitterati” in terms of pay-per-click: I was thinking real live famous people.
As in, if you were a golfer, you might want to pay to read Tiger Woods’ tweets – links to articles from golf mags or maybe a daily how-to tip. (Probably written by some PR flack, but still…) I can see things like that having value to a broader consumer base.
@brad: Morrissey’s done your homework for you- the name is open. Join up. I will warn you though that it can become very addictive.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008 – 05:42 PM
The uniqueness of Twitter lies in it’s ability to evolve in the way that you want it to. If you want to hear more, you follow more. If it’s too much, follow fewer (perhaps more important) people. If you want something different, find different people.
You can’t really stop people from calling you on the phone, and you can’t just call certain people up. Email doesn’t work that way either. Neither does IM. Twitter occupies a strange middle ground that has proven itself to fulfill a large need: the need to post 140 character thoughts. It’s not better or worse, but just different. It’s what you make of it. Sure, losers are going to talk about their poop, but they’ll do that in real life too. Don’t blame the medium, just change who you listen to.
Thursday, April 10, 2008 – 12:16 AM
What can I say…I’m humbled by all of the wisdom this crowd has dispensed on The Third Place.
I will definitely start tweeting or at a minimum, become a voyeur of your tweets.
As I continue to think of tweeting applications for my clients one question I have is has Twitter been applied to any verticals that you know of?
For example, if I have a client in the transportation industry could you envision Twitter being applied to this category to help save people time? Think Garmin navigational systems and crowd sourcing to determine the best traffic routes with the least congestion.
Thursday, April 10, 2008 – 02:50 PM
FWIW: it’s 3:43 am, can’t sleep. I’m checking email with my iPhone, After following a Plaxo request, reading a comment on the Plaxo thread, then clicking through and reading this thread. There’s something interestinh in this chain pf events, I just can’t work out what it is.
Friday, April 11, 2008 – 03:53 AM
I haven’t come across anyone leveraging the use of twitter in a particular vertical. Though I think you might be on to something a kin to the text community that one of the bigger airlines has launched.
If I am remembering correctly they’ve developed the ability for someone to join and text the larger community with relevant updates – time spent in security line, flight delays, etc. Does anyone remember which airline I’m talking about?
Monday, April 14, 2008 – 11:03 AM
I think the Twitter brand is off a bit. I’ve found that it is the most useful for the spread of ideas. Much like blogs, actually, but a smaller version (and much, much more efficient to read).
The whole “What are you doing?” angle is confusing for first timers. It makes people think that it’s really just a site where you post, literally, what you are doing. At first, I thought “this is really stupid.” But, because I am an early adopter, I joined anyway, and I have been pleased to find out that there is much more to this service than meets the eye.
Just my $.02.