It’s a Twitter World
There is no denying the growth of Twitter. Even Facebook has moved to be more like Twitter and Google is trying to build something similar. After all of the buzz around tweeting and even celebrities opening up to the digital access, I wonder where the real value is? I must say, I was taken back when I saw that Slash was on Twitter (assuming it is the real Slash). Ok, for companies, they can check how often and in what context they are being mentioned. This is a good thing for brand and reputation management. It is also good for breaking news, Press Releases and the like. The stream moves fast and as people have hundreds and thousands of followers updating their status, your question, comment, link, etc. quickly gets moved down the page.
So yes there is a lot of tweeting going on, but I still ask the question of value. With so much noise, how much is actually picked up? Does anyone really care that I just picked up groceries, or am at the beach? If I have an emergency like a flat tire, what are the odds of one of my followers are on at that time and could or would provide any assistance? Would Slash help me out with my flat tire on the side of the freeway? Howabout Ashton Kutcher? Or would he just take pictures with his Nikon CoolPix camera?
Why would anyone pay hundreds, often hundreds of thousands of dollars, for Bird’s Nest Soup? Considering what it is composed of I cannot see the value in it, either. Nevertheless, enough people do to have made a small industry and supporting culture around the acquisition and delivery of this “product.”
It certainly matches a younger demographic’s experience with texting and a firehose of information requiring a short attention space to maintain the illusion of being informed. It also fits well with a sea-change in Media, more specifically a Media no longer based on a captive audience. Instead, it matches what is already a Media based on user-choice.
Someone called it, recently, “Internet on steroids,” and that seems as good a description as I’ve heard. It is building on user-driven demands for “communities of common interest.” Observation from outside may make Twitter seem to be based on numbers of friends and followers, but not a single one of those shallow “twibes” of “twitterers” I’m experimenting with sees this thing as something defined by the Kutcher v. CNN contest.
So whether you or I can yet see the value in it, millions are investing billions of hours of their arguably most precious resource: time, in this paradigm. It might be more useful to think of these things, particularly Twitter, as a kind of living search engine, where SEO is not based upon passing muster with ever-increasing spydering index algorhthms. It more closely matches Media as it is becoming rather than what Media once was.