Jul
1
2009
Tech Essentials
Author: Alberta VentureThe Tech Whisperer previews the best in new technology
by Scott Valentine
How Not to Be a Twit
Social Networking On Speed
Twitter’s usefulness has been seized upon by politicians, celebrities and marketers
www.twitter.com
Twitter, huh? Let me get this straight: I get 140 characters – about as long as this sentence – and maybe one web link to say what I want to say? Obviously these people have never met me.
Besides, don’t we already have text messaging, email, Facebook, blogging and every other form of written self-expression on the entire frigging Internet to deal with micro-messages? Do I really need to log onto a website to send one? Do I really need to put @in_front_of_every_name, #in_front_of_every_group and do I really need to continually re-broadcast other @people’s messages and recommend them to others, just in order to fit in and gain popularity? Haven’t we already seen wildly popular social media players of substantially greater meaning wither and/or die because of ill-conceived, build-it-and-they-will-come commercialization strategies?
Check out who uses Twitter. Once you sort through all the celebutantes telling you what you can already get on TMZ and wade through the flotilla of self-professed social media marketing experts (most of whom seem to have no credentials or experience in sociology, media or marketing), you’re left with a pretty brand-sodden and geek-infested run-of-the-mill web community, sans the fun stuff.
There certainly aren’t many eight- to 15-year-olds – the trendily adorned harbingers of new technology successitude – lurking on Twitter’s lag prone servers. And that’s why I’m warning you off.
The Lowdown
What is Twitter, anyway? Text messaging for celebrities, salespeople and folks who like to tell you what they had for lunch? Facebook for the vocabulary-challenged? Ashton Kutcher’s hope for a meaningful existence?
The buzz on Twitter is that its next-big-thing value is in its potential as a captive advertising platform. The vision is of a new content medium in the McLuhanesque sense – a disruptive channel of communication between content producer, marketers and consumers. So the business opportunity (supposedly) is to own as much of the advertising rights, methods, monetization and so on as possible on Twitter. A lot of folks think Twitter is the next billion-dollar baby, a cash cow with innumerable and bottomless gold-plated teats just waiting to be suckled by a technology advertising market with hungry eyes and chapped lips.
But TW is calling B.S. This thing is a pig.
