My Guardian column this week is a tribute to Twitter. Since I haven’t written about that much in the blog, here’s the full text:
When I first used the microblogging platform Twitter - which enables users to publish 140-character-long messages via the web and mobile phones - I thought it was silly. Or rather, the uses to which it was being put were silly: people announcing that they’d just woken up or what they’d had for breakfast. I couldn’t have cared less. But then I should confess that when I first used blogs and podcasts, I didn’t fully comprehend their impact either. So, when my son and webmaster told me I should take another stab at Twitter, I did. And I now see it is an important evolutionary step in the rise of blogging.
I just Twittered this: “I’m writing a column about Twitter and Twittering that.” Not everybody on Twitter saw that update on my life, only those people who care to follow me on the site. That is a critical characteristic of Twitter: it’s selective, in that users choose whether to follow me. And it’s social, in that I choose whom to follow. So we’re not publishing to the big, wide world. We’re talking with our friends and acquaintances.
But at the same time, I can choose to automatically feed my tweet - as an individual Twitter message is called - on to my Facebook profile and also on to my blog page, where more friends can see what I’m up to. That’s another key attribute of the service: it creates feeds. I believe we will be seeing more and more news and other content presented as feeds rather than as packaged products.
I read feeds of my friends’ updates on twitter.com or on my phone via SMS (that is what sets the 140-character limit on messages). I also read feeds of news headlines from the Guardian and individual reporters. Jim Long, a network news photographer, Twitters from White House trips. Ana Marie Cox, the former Wonkette blogger and queen of the snarky political post, has been using Twitter to cover the US primaries for Time.com. I blogged about that, saying she has found the perfect medium for her bon mots and snipes. She responded that Twitter is the perfect medium for covering a campaign. The format gives us a glimpse into what’s happening right now, and cuts to the bone. It’s a hack’s haiku.
Some samples from Cox: “Spin room has already started. Can hear the gentle murmur of BS already sloshing about in the hall … McCain donor just announced he was footing the bar bill for the night. You can start calling him ‘ambassador’ now … Ron Paul compresses coal into diamonds in his mouth … Mitt has so many things ‘in my bloodstream’ (cars, Michigan, business) you could make a v powerful vaccine out of him … First washing-of-underwear-in-sink of presidential cycle 2008!… Enjoying immensely that the pundits got it all, all globally wrong. In most professions, you’d lose your job.”
Because Twitter opened itself up with an API - a programming interface that enables developers to create new services on top of it - all sorts of new inventions are springing up. CommuterFeed is a Twitter service that lets fellow travellers share alerts about problems on their routes to work. Whenever you broadcast a live mobile video on Qik.com, it enables you to send a post to Twitter to alert all your friends to watch. PR people are searching Twitter to find hot topics. I used Twitter to create a tool for collaborative criticism (imagine seeing your friends’ snide remarks as you all watch Pop Idol at the same time, each from your own couches). News sites are using Twitter to get witnesses to share updates on major news events, like earthquakes.
Says political blogger Patrick Ruffini: “Traditional news operated on a 24-hour cycle. Blogs shortened this to minutes and hours. Twitter shortens it further to seconds. It’s not right for every piece of information. But when it comes to instantly assembling raw data from several sources that then go into fully baked news stories, nothing beats it.”
All this springs from a deceptively simple idea and tool. And that is what never ceases to amaze me about the internet: create a platform, make it open, and people will do things with it that you never could have imagined. Considering that Twitter was cofounded by Evan Williams, who also cofounded the company that created Blogger and popularised personal publishing, I should have seen it coming. I just forgot that, on the web, big things often come in small packages.
February 25th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Hi Jeff,
I liked your article but wished you widened the discussion to more than politics and a few other uses.
I’m sure you know that PR people are using Twitter for more than just searching to find hot topics: For the personal and celebrity PR sector, Twitter can be used to alert people and create awareness of events that a client will be appearring at; for internal communications, if your organisation’s internal system breaks down, Twitter could be used as a back up; for Charity PR, Twitter can be used to direct people to good causes.
Essentially, Twitter is another tool for communication - like blogging, podcasts, and other social networking sites - where traditional PR practise needs to be applied and used intelligently for our PR needs.
I talk about this more at my blog (apologies for the shameless self-promotion)
http://puddingrelations.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-can-pr-practitioners-use-twitter.html
February 25th, 2008 at 8:45 am
“Why short is tweet for the blogging community”. Great title!
Maybe I should give Twitter another go. Ideas and dialogues generated on the move could be a stimulus rather than a toxin to high-quality writing.
February 25th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I read the article today. Nice work. Despite being aware of Twitter since its founding I am yet to join the brigade.
February 25th, 2008 at 10:38 am
I think the two things which most people miss about how to get value out of Twitter are (1) to subscribe to the streams of a group of people that you care about (either for personal or professional reasons) and (2) to throw questions out to that group and answer questions from that group. For example, I subscribe to Jeremy Owyang (Forrester analyst) and am always intrigued both by the questions he asks and the answers posed by the people who follow him.
On the politics front — there is an interesting aggregator worth following — http://www.politweets.com — which shows another face of twitter. Namely, how do you tap into the zeitgeist of what a million people are thinking about a topic, in this case the US presidential elections. It shows a stream of “democratic” and “republican” tweets and tracks the most talked about candidates.
February 25th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I blogged the oscars last night with everyone at twemes using hastage #aa08..
It was wonderful and more fun than just watching. Channels and themes!
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/02/25/the-oscars-i-am-a-d-list-weblebrity/
February 25th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Loved that you used my reference of “Short is Tweet”… glad to see my original content and ideas being emulated… thanks for the complement..
http://twitter.com/Furrier/statuses/752378752
February 25th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Great article. Between this article and the article in Inc. Magazine about Evan Williams, I’m convinced that it is time for me to join Twitter.
February 25th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I’ll admit at first I thought of Twitter as narcissistic notepaper - a place where every unexpressed thought of the needy egoist has a place to be examined. The problem is great insights reside with equal weight to tweets like “I think I need to fart.”
As usual with these new-tech innovations I haven’t thought hard enough about them to see the potential and your idea of viewing tweets as feeds rather than content is eyeopening.
Cox’s samples are infinitely more useful than the usual “I think I’m hungry” junk that litters the lines.
February 25th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
John,
Credit for the headline goes to the Guardian editor.
February 25th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
I adore Twitter. It’s like my human powered Google.
February 25th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
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February 26th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
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February 26th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
a friend today asked me how twitter is different from just commenting on a blog. the distinction is that on twitter, comments are syndicated in addition to posts themselves. the length of the conversations aren’t what’s most interesting, in my humble. i happen to think the site is a bit clunky and lacking in functionality. imagine a twitter that incorporates tags, search, widgets, rich media, etc etc. the site was never intended to do what it’s doing now. the uses to which ana marie cox et al are putting this (in the grand scheme) very rudimentary application just show where the Internet is headed. think about it…ooohhh…
February 27th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
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February 28th, 2008 at 3:30 am
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February 29th, 2008 at 8:15 am
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June 6th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Hi Jeff - I know you’re a big twitter. Wonder what you’d make of this I’ve just set up http://www.twitterfund.com - partly to see if twitter fans would be prepared to pay something for it (even if don’t actually do it, esp given the recent $15M VC cash.
Would love you to stop by and let me know what you think. And would love it even more if you donated/posted/followed it.
Chris
June 11th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
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July 24th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
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September 16th, 2008 at 7:56 am
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October 13th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Yeah, my sister-in-law invited me to join Twitter. After the first day of telling me what the kids were wearing to school, I never looked back….
November 19th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
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