I had a conversation with my friend MW the other day about online networking and social media during which she remarked that she saw absolutely no use for Twitter. It was kind of an odd remark given that she’s Finance Director for a U.S. Representative who was just re-elected. Despite that, I allowed as how if you didn’t have a use for Twitter it really was just a lot of blateration.
When she asked me to elaborate I explained that I had two Twitter accounts, one for my personal blog (you can see my hugely engrossing tweets over there in the right hand column) and one for my professional life. The one for my professional life, I told her, I use like a private news feed.
I follow other people who do the same day job that I do, designers who are doing cool and interesting stuff, a couple of web design and development magazines, some outfits that specialize in WordPress, and a few other interesting people. Doing this ensures that the links and updates that come through my Twitter stream generally have intrinsic value. I, in turn, put out updates that have the same sort of content value and many of the people I’m following are also following me. But just because I’m using Twitter and getting that level of information out of it doesn’t mean that everyone is either getting that value or putting that value back into it.
Back in the 1990s when digital video cameras started making their way onto the scene the death of film was roundly predicted right along side the death of movie studios. After all, if filmmakers didn’t need the financial overhead that studios provide to get the equipment and the crew really the only thing they’d need them for is distribution, and with the studios having only one thing to offer filmmakers would be in a better position since they controlled both the means of production and the rights to the product. But this line of thinking places a primacy on technology failing to realize that it doesn’t matter how accessible the technology is, if you don’t have decent content no one is really going to care. The same is true of Twitter and Facebook and whatever the next new tech/communications tool that comes along. Without decent content, the mechanism to publish or create content is irrelevant. Where this breaks down, unfortunately, is with celebrities.
Celebrity Twitter feeds are hugely popular for the simple reason that following a celebrity on Twitter gives people the illusion that they know, and are friends, with that celebrity. If you follow Ashton Kutcher and @ reply him with something clever he may personally acknowledge you and maybe some of his celebrity will rub off on you. Yet, when you look at most celebrity Twitter feeds you see that they’re, well, blateration with no intrinsic value.
They don’t tell you anything new, and no checking in via Foursquare at Starbucks in Westwood is not something new, and they don’t tell you anything you can use. They’re entirely self promotion.
So in an sense, MW was correct, Twitter is pretty useless unless you set out to make something of it. On the other hand, Marshall McLuhan’s basic axiom still applies: Twitter definitely reflects the increased narcissism and short attention span that seem to be hallmarks of the 21st century.
Twitter – I like it – I’m following a just few people and organizations none of whom/which tweets very often – once or twice a day is the average – and this is how I keep up with what they’re doing and thinking. I follow the Dalai Lama, a woman Zen Roshi who is the real thing, some other Buddhists, the Large Hadron Collider run by CERN, Rachel Maddow, a couple of personal friends…. the very mixture is energizing. Or something. But I hate it when someone tweets every half-hour about trivialities. I drop those folks –