'Twitter gives voice to the voiceless' - eg the US President Blabbertastic palmtop chunter-casting service Twitter* has received another massive hype injection from the BBC, which has published an interview - already causing a Twitter sensation - on how important Twitter is, given by Twitter's co-founder. The Beeb managed to worm many important indiscretions out of Evan Williams. "Our …
"Twitter gives voice to the brainless"
There, fixed it. You're welcome.
.
In other news:
"Our goal at Twitter is to be a force for good," the media exec eventually admitted...
Their goal is to be a _force_for_good_? Uh-oh, folks, time to look the fuck _out_...
" In case you have not read a newspaper, listened to the radio or looked at the interwebs for a few years, Twitter is the latest stage in the progression of web formats. It is essentially a type of personal website so easy to update that users are often tempted to do so even when they don't really need to. "
Or in other words, it's like TheRegister, but for people who aren't tech journalists....
What's the Paris Hilton angle?
... doesn't give you the right to an audience.
Just because people can say anything they want on twitter, they shouldn't mistake that for thinking they (or their views) therefore matter. If blogging is like keeping a diary (with about the same number of people reading the average blog/diary, in each case) then twitter is pretty close to muttering to yourself. Occasionally a few mutterers, sorry: twitterers, will gather a group of followers who have nothing better to do with their time than listen to the rantings of a complete stranger. However for the overwhelming majority, they might as well go some place deserted and shout their heads off. it will have the same cathartic effect, and the same (zero) effect on everybody else.
So yes, by all means give the voiceless a voice, but please let's give everyone else a pair of ear plus so we don't have to listen to them.
So:
1) No business plan,
2) Some vague volume will = revenue in the future statement,
3) Want to do good (didn't Google once upon a time).
Sounds like a great investment to me!
Thanks for trying to put this useless hype in perspective, let's also not forget some of the great analysis that's already been done on Twitter:
1) The average(Mean) number of posts per Twitter user is 1.
2) 10% of users generate 90% or posts.
With "No business plan".
Now I'm not saying that "generate hype" is a *good* business plan, but they do have one. You also have to admit that they're damned good at it too, to the extent that if hype were money they'd make Croesus look like a doley scouser.
The minor problem here is that it isn't. The major problem will occur when those pumping the money in notice this.
As someone from West of The Pond (and West of the rest of the U.S. as well), I don't get always get immediate and direct access to interviews such as this, which fill my day (and heart and soul) with hope for our collective future(s). I thank El Reg for the pithy, and no doubt accurate, summation of a world-shattering exposition by a world-changing technologist. More of this type reporting, please, to go with my new keyboard . . .
...by Twitocracy. The Leader wears a Glasses Cam, and Citizens can watch his stream 24 hours a day.
A nice comment system and a live real-time vote on any issue. Because the cam is on 24/7, there's reduced risk of secret deals or non-married-and-missionary sex.
Kinda like 1984, but we would watch big brother.
It's funny, I seem to remember reading ages ago that Twitter was going to outdo facebook.
That, I don't think, is likely now. Facebook has (IMO) caught on because it allows people to post photos/videos for family/friends, as well as messages and status updates (or tweets, in twitter parlance). It also allows members to post links, chat (using a sort of web based IM) and play games with their facebook friends.
In short, it performs a function. It is much like the virtual equivalent of meeting friends in the physical world.
Twitter allows the user to fire off short messages at other users, so (in my opinion) is similar to being a speaker at a group meeting addressing an audience or conference. This is not how people communicate.
Twitter will, I believe, ultimately fail, because it provides no other function that allowing you to talk at people. I would even go so far as to say that if only 10% of their members are actually tweeting, they are already failing.
In short, I think that within the year, Twitter will have gone the way that Second Life has (if you recall, Second Life was also going to be the next big comms medium as well), and the way that (IMO at least) blogs have gone. We'll all be thinking "Ahh, Twitter, I remember that".
I'm no big fan of Twitter myself but it did come in handy a few months ago when UK newspaper the Guardian was having a spot of trouble with a superinjunction. Around about the same time the words Trafigura, Barclays, and Farrelly started appearing on Twitter quite a lot.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/oct/14/trafigura-fiasco-tears-up-textbook
There's summat still up wrt Grauniad and Barclays though, especially if you mention that the Chairman of Barclays is an "independent director" on the BBC Executive board, the comment will very quickly disappear. You don't even have to mention it in the context of the BBC's coverage of Barclays or the Middle East; just mention it and it will vanish.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/running/executive/eb_marcus_agius.shtml
One swallow doesn't make a summer and all that.
The news meeja in general and the Grauniad and the Beeb in particular seem to have an interest in portraying Twitter and Facebook as forces for democracy. Not sure why, other than it's easy to report the Twitter/Facebook aspect of a story without doing and real work. researching a story in the real world outside of Web 2.0 might mean get off your arse and leaving the news room, or at least picking up a telephone and interacting with other human beings.
How often have you heard on the news that "a facebook group has been set up"? And how often is membership of that group a democratically insignificant number of people?
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