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.
