

The Big Lie About Twitter - ilamont
http://atomictango.com/2009/10/27/hypocritical-mass-the-big-lie-about-twitter/

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ryandvm
This guy is basically right. Twitter isn't social; it's a PR tool.

What's annoying is that you have all these "broadcasters" (bloggers,
celebrities, media personalities) telling me how great Twitter is. And for
them, the people with an audience, it is.

But guess what - most people have nothing worth broadcasting about. It turns
out that the average person has very average thoughts. Who knew?

The other problem I have with Twitter is that it's just Twitter. It makes me
cringe to hear tech luminaries talk about using Twitter as infrastructure
(e.g. replacing RSS). Does nobody else mind handing over that level of power
to a closed, corporate body?

I'll give microblogging a serious thought when there are protocol standards
and more than one provider is actually operating in the space.

~~~
coliveira
But I think what makes twitter interesting is that anyone can become a
broadcaster. Now, this is not news for people in the media, because they will
just have another channel. But for everyone else it important.

~~~
swernli
From pg's essay "Hiring is Obsolete"
(<http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html>),

    
    
      Have you ever noticed that when animals are let out of cages, they don't always realize at first that the door's open? 
      Often they have to be poked with a stick to get them out. Something similar happened with blogs. 
      People could have been publishing online in 1995, and yet blogging has only really taken off in the last couple years. 
      In 1995 we thought only professional writers were entitled to publish their ideas, and that anyone else who did was a crank. 
      Now publishing online is becoming so popular that everyone wants to do it, even print journalists. But blogging has not 
      taken off recently because of any technical innovation; it just took eight years for everyone to realize the cage was open.
    

There are quite a few web technoligies for which I could write your same
sentence. What makes bulletin boards interesting is that anyone can become a
broadcaster, except that not many people were aware of bulletin boards so you
didn't reach many people. What makes electronic mailing lists interesting is
that anyone can become a broadcaster, except they weren't that easier to
discover and join so you didn't reach many people. What makes blogging+rss
interesting is that anyone can become a broadcaster, except it has started to
get a similar air of elitism as traditional editorials so unless you have some
gimmick or are already famous you don't reach many people. What makes twitter
interesting is that anyone can become a broadcaster, except the site has
become so inundated with celebrities, news personalities, corporations and
marketters that, like blogging, unless you have a gimmick or are already
famous, you are just part of the noise and don't reach many people.

Is twitter interesting? Sure. Is it revolutionary? Eh, maybe a little. But
does it represent some kind of fundamental shift in how people communicate and
who can broadcast to large audiences? Not in my opinion. Twitter makes some
things easier, but it doesn't completely change the game. There have been any
number of amazing broadcast methods coming down the pipe ever since the web
came into existence. But all that broadcasting for the average man doesn't
make a lick of difference if no one is paying attention.

~~~
elblanco
More important though than "everyone can become a broadcaster" is that
broadcasting means you have something to broadcast. Putting together a
_broadcast_ takes time. You say "not many people were aware of ____, so you
didn't reach many people", but the flip side of that is that people who are
aware of xyz broadcast medium and wish to broadcast something (thus providing
more content for consumers of the broadcast building into a feedback loop of
broadcast/consumer growth...like television) don't always have the time or
energy to produce something decent for broadcast, or to produce something at
all. How many completely dead Twitter accounts are there?

Twitter's retention stats show that this is true even for something as
completely cut down as Twitter (creating a broadcast requires mere seconds of
time)...they only retain, what, about 10% of their users (or maybe rather 10%
are active)?

------
tptacek
At this point, you need to either be important somehow to the industry or have
something really novel to say to get my attention with a Twitter critique.
Maybe I'm wrong, but this guy seems like neither; he works for an ad/PR
agency, and is saying the same thing everyone else does about Twitter.

Twitter is undoubtedly overvalued because of all the media exposure they've
received. But why the f@ck is that supposed to matter to me? Twitter _works_ ;
I've used it to run surveys, I've used to answer questions, I've used it to
find customers, I've used it to fill classrooms for OE courses.

If an ad/strategy person can't figure out how to use the service --- or,
better yet, refuses to embrace it for emotional reasons like "the hype bothers
me" --- I have to wonder what they're doing in that profession.

------
Ye-Ha
Twitter did facilitate the Iranian protestors. And facilitated getting the
word out to the world. Twitter did help make the Kogi Korean BBQ Taco Truck a
sensation! Twitter did keep us updated about Balloon Boy in real time.

I agree that it is not a "platform" but it does provide real-time news and
discussion like no other tool at this time.

Obviously, people who Tweet that they are riding the train to work don't 'get
it.'

But those of us who have formed discussion groups using hashtags do.

As an example, I'm CulinaryHatchet, have a blog (that I've been neglecting
while working on BHeardusa.com start-up), really into the #profood movement
and have met many other very informed #profood -ies (as well as #agchat and
#foodinc) on Twitter, including the son of the people from whom Michael Pollan
(Omnivore's Dilemma) purchased his cow. There is great discussion in #profood
from all sides of the issue. There are farmers, farmer's markets, attorneys,
journalists, restaurants, etc. I can't think of any other resource that
provides this kind of value right this second (although BHeardUSA.com will be
taking it to the next level and using Twitter as one of the tools.)

~~~
runinit
I don't understand how you can facilitate a real, in depth discussion with 160
characters or less.

~~~
Ye-Ha
Because you haven't yet done it, perhaps? Having the small character limit
really forces you how to get your message across very succinctly. How many
times have you read something that could have been boiled down considerably
and gotten the point across more clearly? We actually do have meaningful real-
time conversations in #profood. I have rarely used two Tweets to make a point.

Having said that, many Tweets are links to #profood blogs.

~~~
alain94040
Some talk about Steve Jobs's reality distortion field.

Your quote offers another example: "Having the small character limit really
forces you how to get your message across very succinctly". All perfectly
logical.

Do you really, really, _really_ believe this? That a limitation at 140
characters is helps people express their thoughts better? It doesn't strike
you in any way, limiting? Are there some good thoughts that need 200
characters?

Don't get me wrong: having such a limit has advantages to the readers. But if
you think of it, twitter is not so different from a giant blog RSS feed which
only broadcasts the titles of the posts...

~~~
marknutter
> twitter is not so different from a giant blog RSS feed

I think this is precisely the point. Twitter has basically taken the idea of
RSS and made it RRSS (really really simple syndication), in that non-techies
can easily grasp the concept.

It's curious you should mention Apple in your post, too. Were you one of the
people who said "no wifi, only 5gb space, no FM radio, it will fail" when the
iPod came out?

~~~
alain94040
No, I'm the one who bought an iPod on the day it was first released. I am an
Apple fan boy, if you need to know :-)

------
marknutter
I agree completely with this author. Following more than 100 or so people
becomes completely unmanageable and I think destroys the value of Twitter for
anyone who does it.

------
yosh
It's interesting Kogi BBQ is mentioned, because that to me is an example of
the dysfunction around Twitter.

Twitter started out as an SMS service, yet these days they cannot reliably
deliver SMS messages. Kogi is awesome food, so whenever I visit LA, I turn on
SMS delivery for Kogi's messages on Twitter. This would be a really great
feature, since when I'm out for the evening I may try to stop by Kogi for some
food, and it's great to get updates about where they are in relation to me,
and if they're running late due to traffic (which happens a lot in LA). Except
the last two times I was in LA, Twitter didn't send about half the updates to
my phone. Which makes it not useful at all.

The Kogi case is a great application for one-to-many SMS updates, but Twitter
completely drops the ball on that. Yet Twitter is so popular, there isn't
really room for a more technically competent service to provide value. As
we've seen already, merely cloning Twitter, even if you do it better, isn't
enough.

The world could use a popular, reliable one-to-many SMS delivery platform.
Instead we're stuck with Twitter. It's sad.

------
foulmouthboy
One thing not touched on regarding the strategy of following a lot of people.
Whenever you follow somebody new, an email is sent to that person. For people
who already have lots of followers, this may get lost, but for people who use
Twitter relatively casually, getting this email along with a sample tweet is a
great way to get introduced to a Twitterer that they may be interested in.

It may not be the intent, but it works well as an announcement mechanism as
long as you remember that not everybody uses Twitter for business reasons.

------
Ye-Ha
We could always try an experiment have have this debate on Twitter ;-)

It's best to pick a short hashtag because it counts in your character limit.

#BHeard

@BHeard

