This morning I read Ezra and Tim Fernholz’s 140-char-or-less (clever) discussion about Twitter in the front of the current issue of the Prospect (I don’t think the exchange is online). Naturally, I agree with their basic conclusion that everything is terrible and getting worse. But they’re primarily interested in the advent of Twitter within the media industry. I’m more concerned with how the media industry is transforming Twitter.
I’ve been moaning about the mainstream adoption of Twitter for a while now, and simultaneously feeling guilty — or at least hypocritical — for doing so. I really like Twitter! And, knowing one of the guys that works there at least a little, I want to see the company succeed. I really do think they created something cool, original and beautifully simple.
But it’s been horrifying to watch Twitter evolve into a medium used for important (if not serious) communication. First and foremost, I am appalled by our legislators’ embrace of a time-suck communication medium that is necessarily superficial, and (more perniciously) one that is so convincingly fake-democratic while actually just facilitating communication with rich, Apple-computer-owning white people like myself.
Its adoption by the mainstream media has been similarly off-putting. As a cheap and fun SMS interface for media outlets I have no beef with it; as a means of personal marketing for journalists, the pretense and lack of honesty is dismaying (Ezra’s diagnosis of their motivations as being grounded in a desire to avoid being left behind by the next blog-like internet trend is dead-on, I think — we should thank god we were spared from a hypothetical David Gregory Tumblr). I’d say the median journotweet is something like “getting ready to sit down for an i/v w @spalin. the lady is a tough cookie!” when in fact it should be closer to “complaining abt blogs in line to pick up kids @ sidwell frnds. no poor people around!”
The medium’s been a disaster for some of the better bloggers, too. There are a number of hilarious political writers who’ve tried to ply their wares in 140 characters or less and in the process ended up making their entire authorial voice sound like a cliche. This is not to say that tweets can’t be hilariously funny. But if the medium that made your career is less restrictive, your Twittered communiques may just sound like hacky, “gah!”-filled Jon Stewart imitations. It is an almost unbelievably terrible medium for snark, but no one seems to have noticed.
Curmudgeonly enough for you? I’ll happily admit that my bitching about the direction of the D.C. Twitter universe is selfish. It’s a service that provided a form of communication I found charming and valuable: repartee with close friends and complete strangers. When the space between those groups began to fill in, things got weird. Tweeted conversations began to have personal — and, most horrifyingly, professional — implications. Soon it’ll be time to retreat back to emails and texts among friends until the next early-adopter fad reaches that critical point where it’s usefully populated but not yet filled with relatives and people you met at conferences.
But that doesn’t mean that the professional-networking and personal-marketing uses of Twitter are invalid. It’s just that they’re just not what charmed me into using the service, so it makes me sad to see them disappear. This happened to blogs, too, of course, and then Facebook (though I sat that chapter out). At least this time I’m confident that the coming online-fun fallow period won’t last forever.
Yep, the strange inversion of Twitter’s adoption — where I felt compelled to join because almost every media-related job listing asked for experience with it — still strikes me as a bit off even now that I use it. Maybe, in addition to their desire to not get left behind again, it’s also useful as a online-community-building tool as every paper smaller than the LA Times goes hyper-local.
I agree that there are a lot of people out there using twitter very stupidly, and against the grain of how the service best works.
Luckily though, I don’t have to follow those people. I follow people that are interesting and using twitter well. Mission accomplished.
Seriously. The best thing that twitter has going is the asymmetrical relationship model. You don’t need to follow people you don’t want to.
That being said, it would sure help if twitter provided users with an ability to filter tweets from people they are following. Say you were uninterested in BSG, you could just filter any mention of it out of your timeline.
I think things are going better than expected though.
So I suppose I’m now thoroughly confused. It’s late, so I could also be sarcasm-impaired. Forgive me if that’s the case.
“…one that is so convincingly fake-democratic while actually just facilitating communication with rich, Apple-computer-owning white people like myself.”
Do what? I can only assume this is sarcasm, since there are Twitter clients for pretty much any machine you can point to (provided it has a Web browser), and for sure the majority of my personal circle doesn’t qualify as “wealthy” by American standards.
“Its adoption by the mainstream media has been similarly off-putting…”
Am I missing something in Twitter that mysteriously forces you to follow the feeds of people and organizations whose presence on Twitter you find off-putting?
“It is an almost unbelievably terrible medium for snark, but no one seems to have noticed.”
It’s equally possible that you’re looking in the wrong place. Several of my circle are *quite* adept at 140-character snark. But it’s also part of their personality, not a put-on schtick they do for exposure.
I really think you’re doing it wrong. But of course, part of the point is that anyone can use the service any way they like. Personally, I protect my updates, and block access to anyone I work with and certain members of my family. It sounds to me like you’re arguing that the patio of the corner bar used to be a great place to stand around with friends and bitch about work, until the chick dating your boss suddenly started showing up around the same time.