Unless you live in a cave, you can’t help but hear all the buzz
about Twitter, especially over the last few weeks. Recently, it’s all the media seems to be able to talk about
when it comes to technology. The
political world has been quick to jump on this medium. Even John McCain, who was labeled a Luddite
by some in the 2008 presidential campaign, is getting
into the action.
In times like these, I feel somewhat like SNL’s grumpy
old man. Maybe a bit extreme,
but as a veteran of the dot-com era, I’ve heard this type of hype before. Remember the online grocery retailer Webvan? Well, prior to its catastrophic failure
in 2001, it was going to replace those silly ‘brick and mortar’ grocery stores
once and for all. It turns out
that in spite of the convenience of buying many things online, we all still prefer
to select our produce by hand. But
you wouldn’t have known that if you believed all the media hype back then.
In times like these, I like to bring up the Gartner Group’s hype cycle framework (created
in 1995). This concept basically
states that all new technologies pretty much go through the same cycle which
consists of a period of inflated
expectations, followed by a period of disillusionment
before that technology finds its rightful place. This can be a very messy ordeal as real resources are often
invested (and lost) based on those inflated expectations. Webvan is a billion-dollar example of
such behavior. Of course, online
retailing is a very real part of our lives, but just not in the way Webvan and
the popular press hyped it.
Today, Twitter sits high atop a peak of inflated
expectations, which is sure to be followed by some adjustments, as we
collectively figure out its real value and rightful place in the Internet
tapestry. This is not to say that
it doesn’t have value and won’t survive as a viable company (though it will
need to find a revenue model at some point). In the end we need to separate the hype from real value and
also be aware of some very real risks.
One way to identify Twitter’s value is looking at which
tweeters have the greatest number of followers. A scan of Twitterholic’s
rankings reveals that top tweeters are predominantly members of the media,
political leaders and celebritiesÉor, more generally, people who society tends
to look to as thought leaders. In
other words, Twitter is for people who have something of interest to say to a
receptive audience.
I speak of this in a recent
article in the Capitol Weekly on twittering in Sacramento last month around
the budget negotiations in the legislature. In fact, this instance was a perfect example of where
Twitter made complete sense. Reporters
John Myers (KQED) and Anthony
York (Capitol Weekly) staked out
the capitol day and night covering live, via twitter, the events of those
heated sessions. To a very
specific audience of people, that constant up-to-the-minute flow of information
was of crucial importance.
We can then observe that truly valuable tweeting consists of
three key elements: 1) highly
relevant and real-time information 2) from a credible source 3) delivered to a
highly receptive audience.
However, this doesn’t’ prevent your friend ‘John Doe’ from constantly
tweeting about mundane details of his life. While John Doe’s tweets are lazy blogging at best, this type
of haphazard tweeting can be downright embarrassing or damaging for individuals
of higher visibility (in particular, elected officials, and even more so,
candidates for political office).
Rep. Joe Barton (and/or his ‘staffer’) learned that while Tweeting
during Obama’s speech to Congress last month. First, the tweet heard around the Hill: "Aggie basketball
game is about to start on ESPN2 for those of you that aren’t going to bother
watching Pelosi smirk for the next hour."
Followed 15 minutes later with: ‘Disregard that last Tweet from a
staffer.’ Ouch! Just like the inadvertently
sent email; you can’t take back a tweet once tweeted.
For political candidates the risks are even higher. They must balance between two opposing
objectives. On the one hand, once
committed to Twitter, candidates must fully engage the medium and have
interesting things to say; otherwise, they’ll end up looking foolish if all
they talk about are the trivial details of their daily life, or worse, spout
campaign talking-points and material.
On the other hand, candidates must be careful not to create a record of
specific policy positions or gaffes that might hurt them immediately or down
the road.
Unless you have something to say that will interest your
followers AND that you don’t mind resides in the online equivalent of your elementary
school ‘permanent record,’ you
might want to exercise some impulse control and resist the urge to tweet
it. There are other mediums that may
be more appropriate and are most certainly further-reaching (e.g. email, blog
posts) than Twitter.
And let’s not even talk about tweeting under the influence, there’s
already a sticker for that.