Why the media doesn’t get Twitter

Wm Morris · 4.06.09  

I find it interesting that the mainstream media doesn’t seem to understand Twitter (and I’m being reductive here — obviously some MSMers get it). In particular, I’m amused that the words inane and superficial tend to come up a lot (or even if those exact words aren’t used, the impression of what Twitter is always seems to head in that direction).

The media doesn’t get Twitter because it obsesses over the contents of the tweets (and in many cases because the commentator has only experienced Twitter as the content of the tweets). This is a completely understandable mistake to make. But it misses what Twitter is — or at least the Twitter I know. I’m sure that there are parts of Twitter that are completely inane.

The comeback from many of us who use Twitter tends to be: it’s all about the conversation and the community. I agree, but also think that it’s a bit more complex than that. After all, there are much better platforms for having meaningful conversations — FriendFeed, e-mail lists, blogs with threaded comments, and web forums all provide a better way of managing the flow of conversation.

In addition, the business press has gotten all hot and bothered lately with the idea of real-time search. I think that’s an intriguing direction, but except for certain topic areas, it’s not quite there yet.

Here’s what Twitter really is: a stream of triggers. It’s not so much the content of individual tweets that matters as the effect a tweet has on a reader. Or to put it another way — each tweet is an invitation.

Each tweet provides one or more of the following:

  • A link to click on
  • A reminder to do something related to your life or job
  • An opportunity to ask a question
  • A recommendation
  • An amusing tidbit to brighten your day
  • Another piece of info about a person that may become an important part of your personal network
  • An invitation to interact, to reply ,or re-tweet, or direct message, or comment on a blog, or donate, or take a survey, etc.

A lot of the negative reaction to Twitter follows from the platform itself. In particular, the 140 character limit and the fact that the platform name itself suggests a certain superficiality. And really, it’s interesting how much of the reporting/commenting on Twitter revolves around the name* and the character limit as if that really said it all about what happen on Twitter. There is an immediate negative reaction to the idea that anything could be communicated in that amount of space.

I say the focus on content — on what’s being communicated, the story being told — is understandable, and it is. But let’s be clear that when it comes to print journalism (as well as TV/radio), the obsession with content, on a certain method of storytelling and how that is defined as good or important or successful is a product of its own set of (not 140 character) limits.

On the one hand, you have the content creators — the reporters, editors, producers — who tend to measure the success of content for how well it would communicate with/appeal to an ideal reader/viewer.

On the other hand, you have the sales and marketing people, where the measure of success is ratings and ad rates — e.g. the response of the readers/viewers in aggregate.

Neither measure of success necessarily has a whole lot of meaning to the real flesh-and-blood individuals who are consuming the content. Certainly, news stories and advertisements can be triggers, invitations, calls to action. That’s the whole Faustian bargain of the old business model, right? The ads are meant to influence behavior but are tolerated because they subsidize an informed citizenry, the two sets of triggers living side-by-side, not holding hands, of course, but always twinned.

Twitter is also a medium for delivering content, but by focusing solely on the nature of that content, the meaning of each individual message, you miss out on why the content — whether you think it is inane or not — is important to those who create and consume it. Simply put, Twitter affects your day (or night).

With Twitter, you choose who you follow — you choose who you allow to send triggers your way. And in return you create triggers, some that are calculated to speak to all of your followers, some a sub-set (hashtags!) and some to just one person. And you choose when to dip in and out of the flow of triggers, and how they are delivered to you — mobile, web, widget, app, feed reader, etc.

So, of course, the mainstream media doesn’t get it. Just like they didn’t get blogs at first. The audience isn’t only talking back, it’s going off on its own and creating networks of people that enrich each others lives. Sometimes that expresses itself in superficial and inane ways, but here we get to the real genius of Twitter: every trigger, every invitation has to happen in 140 characters or less. Which means that skimming, processing, reading, in short, consuming a call to action takes very little time at all. Not every tweet is a hit for every Twitter user. But if you get the right collection of people you follow, enough are that, corny as it is, your life is better because of it. And really, that’s what all human interaction should be about.

* And I can’t help but note that the riffing off of the name and the claims of superficiality are a bit rich when they come from the nattering nabobs of the chattering classes (yep, I’m not afraid to smugly combine alliterative insults).

Categories: Journalism, Social Media | Tags: ,

Comments

3 Responses to “Why the media doesn’t get Twitter”

  1. Th. on May 4th, 2009 5:01 pm

    .

    I have to admit that I don’t really get Twitter yet. Don’t judge me.

  2. kent on May 8th, 2009 9:18 am

    I joined Twitter over a year ago, far before it was a fad and found it to be interesting for about a day, largely because no one I knew or cared to follow was tweeting. Today, as more and more people are tweeting, I can see what a great service it is to some people…not me at this point, for much the same reasons as last year, but with one major realization: I don’t have a smart phone and therefore find Twitter to have little added value over other applications I use more regularly.

  3. Wm Morris on May 13th, 2009 9:00 pm

    I don’t have a smart phone either and probably won’t for a year or two. I tend to be a cheapskate when it comes to tech stuff. I wait for the technologies I want to come down in price and multiply in options (I really hope Android continues to take hold because I’m an open source/platform kind of guy).

    But even so I still get value out of Twitter because
    a) I’m on the computer a lot at work and home
    b) there are a lot of great PR/marketing pros on Twitter esp. those working in the world of higher ed. These are folks that I wasn’t connected to in my other online groups.
    and c) there are times when breaking news in the Twin Cities region is of value to me and I can often get that in a reliable way from Twitter.

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