I’ve been Twittering for a week now. You know. The micro–blogging site where you can follow (or listen to) friends and complete strangers, and they can follow (or listen to) you in return. Where you can snoop around to check out whether Matthew Buckland is more popular than Vincent Maher, or if Mike Stopforth has more followers than Justin Hartman. Then you can look at Hugh MacLeod’s tweets and wonder how he got more followers than there are people in his home town. Or Robert Scoble who has more people listening to him than God.
During my first day on Twitter I was all fired up and gung ho. I started following all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. People in Tokyo, bloggers in different time zones, columnists I had absolutely no interest in. I must confess in all my excitement I followed people solely because they had groovy names, wore weird sunglasses, or purple hats, for goodness’ sake.
Before long I was following half the world. Which is great if you want to get followed yourself, so that people don’t think you’re an abject loser with zero social networking appeal. People are horribly kind on Twitter and mostly reciprocate the minute you start following their stream. That’s unless they are members of the e-lluminati (that clandestine group of digital heavyweights who secretly control Web 2.0), in which case the world follows them and they only follow God, Jesus Christ and the Scobleizer.
The only problem with the land grab approach is that while you become popular pronto pronto, you’re flooded with the most inane, useless information in the world. I soon found out that I actually don’t give a toss whether Jizzwhala is having vegetarian polony in San Francisco for lunch on Tuesday, when last RubyT picked her nose, or that JasonJuba has just updated his blog site featuring cute kittens and is now feeling a trifle fluish.
For me the real value in Twitter was realised when I started following people whose opinions I find interesting, people who are thought leaders, who break news online or whom I want to watch as a collective to see how they relate to each other in a social group. Given I now write a lot about new media, it’s been an interesting exercise in sociology to watch the who’s who of the Web 2.0 world interact online, to see what they are thinking, reading, doing, blogging and saying to each other. A lot is ego piffle, but when you sort the wheat from the chaff there’s value to be had.
Twitter is in its infancy and I believe the real value in the site will hopefully come as applications become more useful and the technology matures. To keep ahead of clones like Germany’s Wamadu, Japan’s Mogo2, and the Franco/German Frazr, Twitter will need to add a layer of sophistication. As a user I would love to see preference lenses so that I can sort South African from international streams, and then slice and dice streams into personalized categories.
Then in a hectic, rapid paced world where there is so much to do, but so little time, it would be great to apply the Twitter concept to life, the universe and everything. With Twitter you only have 140 characters to say your say. Now just imagine if you applied this concept to, for instance, the New York Times Top 5 Paperback Business Best Sellers:
1. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell: What makes moments of critical mass? Ideas spread like viruses driven by the influential few, stickiness and the power of context.
2. Getting Things Done, by David Allen: Free your mind of remembering tasks, so you can focus completely on getting those tasks done.
3. Go Green, Live Rich, by David Bach: Fifty ways to make your life, your home, your shopping, and your finances greener while achieving financial freedom.
4. A Whole New Mind, by Daniel H. Pink: Abundance, outsourcing and automation dominate the conceptual age in which creativity is the only real competitive differentiator.
5. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki: Two dads. Respected (financially illiterate) academic who dies in poverty and a drop out who becomes a self-made millionaire. Save, invest, own property, protect your assets.
Instead of taking five months to read that lot, you’ve got the key thrust in five minutes.
I say let’s Twitterise all those literary classics you’ve never read but should have, purely for the snob appeal. Twitterise boring staff meetings, motivational videos, client briefings, presidential speeches, the chairman’s letter to shareholders in all annual reports, and openings of parliament. In fact why not Twitterise all corporate, political and personal snooze fests that hold high ego appeal yet offer very little value, so we can spend the rest of our life doing things we really enjoy. Like spending time on Twitter.
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20 Responses to “Don’t be a twit!”
Flipside to Scoble’s following is the amount of people he follows. 21000+. Somehow, both numbers add together in his mind to make him believe that he is somehow “King of Twitter”, and knows more about everything than everyone else. Something like that, anyway. What else is new?
The one advantage that Twitter has over traditional blogging is that it’s so easy to keep up to date. God, “Traditional Blogging”. It’s barely become a trend, and we’re already moving on :/
I’m absolutely for the ‘twitterization’ of most corporate activities. An old boss of mine use to say, if you can’t write the intro to your radio package in one minute then it’s not focused properly (and is consequently fairly crap being the implication). I also recently lost my Twitter virginity. Was a guilty addict of FB updates, so it is at the moment a dangerously time nibbling pleasure. I’m still trying to work out quite why. “Only connect” EM Forster said, I believe. Plus it has normalised things a bit. While many of the entries are calls for opinion on the latest version of this or how to de-bug that, I have found it comforting that the intense E-glitterati have lives too. While I operate in the social media world a fair bit, there is a great deal of my time spent doing things like de-fleaing the dog or dressing Barbie (or vice versa). It has made me feel slightly warm that even Tyler Reed thinks about something as mundane as traffic. See you on the sunny side of the Tweet.
@Wogan May: Sweet mother of Shiva, how can anyone who is not a SEO consultant follow that many people? Well maybe he’ll one day start a new tech cult, and then it will all prove useful (Maybe he already has?) And thanks for the heads up on Vhata. Oh for Tweeple with a great sense of humour.
@jayne morgan: Ooooh. That EM Forster quote. I’m right with you on that one. But just think about it. The internet has exploded tribal consciousness into a global consciousness where parts of your psyche can interact with anyone else who’s connected. And ja it’s great to see that beyond some ego’s there live normal, arb people.
in fact, isn’t the attraction of all this stuff actually a retrieval of tribal? Something we lost along the way when we all started dismantling the various traditional units. We fragmented and we are coming back together in different groups and via different means. I know its all supposed be great because of the sharing information but humans don’t get this worked up about something unless it speaks to something instinctive inside them. For me there is something wonderful about the feeling of connection enhanced by the fact that the information is contemporaneous. Because of its portability, twitter makes the information even more real time than FB. In the end we want to be part of the gang and in on the conversation. Just as we did in the playground. I’ve long had a theory that, on some level, everyone is fourteen. I think this backs that up.
@jayne morgan: It’s semantics really, but it depends on your definition of what a tribe is. Typically tribes are defined by kinship, or lineage, or nationality. Groupings that are homogeneous, clearly bound. Perhaps Web2.0 gives rise to a new notion of tribes or collectives that are fluid and dynamic. Almost groupings of consciousness.
And for sure I reckon you’re spot on. That wanting to belong probably drives a lot of what social networking is all about. But then so too does voyeurism and wanting to be seen.
Very interesting. Here is my experience with social networking:
After some protracted nagging by a couple of friends, I finally opened a Facebook account last summer, having decided that 1. if this really was a faster, easier way for me and my many friends ands contacts around the world to inform and stay informed about each other, I would be foolish not to take advantage of it, 2. using my Facebook page to create an autobiography that included images and relevant sound files would at least be an interesting experiment, and 3. my inner geek said, “Do it! Evolve!” I carefully crafted my page, avoiding the use of almost all the “instant pestering” applications of which everyone else seemed so fond, and using discrimination in my choice friends — why would I change that?
After one month, I took it all down and closed my account with Facebook. The constant chatter, the overwhelming volume of mundane and trivial information upon which the Facebook network is built; I simply couldn’t take it anymore. So, does this mean that I am antisocial, or an evolutionary throwback? Perhaps so, because my response to that question is, “I don’t care!” Needless to say, the very thought of becoming involved with Twitter makes me shudder.
@tobymarx: I think what it means is that you are selective. I think a person can only take being “super poked” so many times ;).
I think with all these thing discernment is key. FaceBook unfortunately went the route making apps for everyone, their hamster, and their toe nail clippers. The result a slew of applications which have moderate to phattooey! entertainment value, and fewer applications that add real value to life.
Twitter is interesting to me from a professional level. A good way to see what people are reading, reading, doing online etc.
How do I keep track of friends? I still love long rambling phone calls and letters. But I’m essentially a writer. I love words.
While the media is all about the young and the famous, spare a thought for those of us more blessed in years that sense. I discovered newsgroups in 1997 and blogging in 2006. It is too soon for me to change again! But I’ll feel such a twit if I don’t! (currently reading Frazer’s “The Golden Bough” - now there is a challenge to twitterise!)
@tobymarx: Thanks for that link. I think that’s part of what is great about Twitter, is that it offers an instant link to a virtual community. For me it speaks to the democratization of society - and inversion of power, and I like that a lot.
@archiearchive: If you’re not on Twitter already why not give it a twirl. I must say I couldn’t start my day without it now. And “The Golden Bough”. Hmmm. I like a good challenge. How’s this:
THE GOLDEN BOUGH, Sir James Frazer: All our gods evolved from one story. The dying of autumn to spring. The lovemaking of spirit & matter, divine feminine & the sacred king.
I deleted my Twitter account last month. After a long while as a Twitterer, the ‘fad’ appeal of it paled and tweeting began to annoy me. As did the inane tweets by most of the twittering community.
It just is not for me. I prefer blogging and forums. Rock on forums and bloggers!
Robert, must say I’m with you on the whole blogging thing. Nothing can beat that. Which forums do you use?
I enjoy Twitter for a quick scan. I’ve found that it’s important to be ruthless about how you follow. The minute it grates, end the stream. By being selective I’ve picked up on some interesting stuff that I might otherwise have missed.
See what I mean about the keyboard! Should read as regards not reards.
Anyway, the spelling distraction worked ‘cos it got me off topic too easily.
Back to Twitter etc.
Initially I was all for the advent of this radicalised minimalist form of communication. But I soon came to realise that there were no sequential threads. Just one-off statements (in the main) by tweeters nee’ bloggers that:
a) potentially and in certain instances diminished their blogosphere credibility as formative and expert bloggers in their chosen field of endeavour
b)is a lazy way to communicate. Why should you be interested in the fact that I am eating a Ponti’s salad while sprawled out on the sofa with my laptop precariously balanced with the salad bowl on my boep? What life enhancing lesson can anyone learn from this inanity?
c) the hordes of late adopters to Twitter (apologies) get lost amid the herds of early adopters and whatever tweeting the latecomers may have regardless of its quality and ability to espouse a view and impart knowledge, gets lost in the mass babbling that surrounds them. In effect it all blends into background noise.
But you have a point. A good one. Selective following may be the way to finally truly enjoy something meaningful at Twitter.
Unfortunately some high profile blogging profile made a silly and unqualified statement which 146 characters is totally insufficient to qualify - he said (and I seem to recall it was Scoble who said it. Could be totally wrong) that the key to obtaining meaning from tweeting is determined by a higher number of Tweeters whom you follow.
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that the more you follow the more you need to digest and that is its weakness. You cannot communicate with 10,000+ twitters! Impossible.
So you end up focusing on the good old boy blogging network clique while paying scant attention to the masses.
And if I sound bitter as cats’ pee and twisted, you’d be right! So what. Who cares anyway? It is a fad. And as many times as I have said this is a fad, the silence from the A listers (as in zero response) was deafening, and so the more I became convinced that the game was all about that fine old blogging staple - popularity ranking.
Yes, in my view the more people who you follow or who follow you, the more popular you are perceived to be. How shallow.
So I quit Twitter. And Jaiku. And Pownce. And Facebook. And MySpace. And MyWebLog. And all the hundreds of invites to join this or that new social network.
Suddenly the social networking developer world seems to think we need more and more varients on a social networking theme. New launches sprouted overnight like mushrooms where they’d been nurtured and fed of BS in the dark!
They are popping out new ’social networks where we can do this or that but hold very little conversation because we are too busy sending invites, answering invites, ignoring invites, leaving messages on walls, installing this or that application and joining groups.
What a waste of programming talent and skill.
And finally: - ATTENTION SPAN.
This comment amounts to roughly 22 tweets of 146 characters each. Imagine reading each of the 22 tweets in between all the rest of the twittering detrius that springs up in between?
Difficult to remain focused and digest my message, yes? Let alone respond to each one where the content would be out of context?
So this is also why I elected to stick with blogging and forums. In fact I think I will be launch a new forum soon. Why not?
I think I will call it ENGAGE. In fact I paused typing, went off to Network Solutions and bought a new domain called http://engage.uk.net because that is what I think we need to do more of with each other.
Thanks for letting me rant. If I bored the pants off you - too bad, someone has to do it….!!!
ENGAGE!
RB
PS: will let you know when the ENGAGE forum goes live.
[…] extent that a lot of people think that twitter is solely about what Tribes you’re in. They worry more about the number of followers they have, and who is following whom, than about what people are […]
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Mandy de Waal is a columnist, writer and journalist. A former broadcast journalist, de Waal is writes for Noseweek, ITWeb, MarkLives, Brandchannel and MarkMagazine. She is part of the judging panel of the Discovery Health Journalism Awards and the MPASA PICA Awards. In her spare time she writes poetry and fiction.
Read her blog Artificial Intelligence: Articles, essays and riffs about new media, media, branding, economics and current events.
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Flipside to Scoble’s following is the amount of people he follows. 21000+. Somehow, both numbers add together in his mind to make him believe that he is somehow “King of Twitter”, and knows more about everything than everyone else. Something like that, anyway. What else is new?
The one advantage that Twitter has over traditional blogging is that it’s so easy to keep up to date. God, “Traditional Blogging”. It’s barely become a trend, and we’re already moving on :/
Personally? We could use more Tweeple (rafiq’s word) like Jonathan Hitchcock / Vhata. Lol.
~ Wogan
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