April 23, 2009 _ 14:19 / Digital Nation Team / comments (0)
You may have noticed that we have a Twitter feed next to our blog. You may have also noticed that we only use it to announce blog posts, which happen to appear right next to it. So why do we have a Twitter feed? Because Twitter is the next big thing and we would look foolish to eschew the latest and greatest connective technology.
One only needs to recount the last week to realize the extent of the Twitter phenomenon. Oprah twittered her first tweet on Friday -- to mixed reviews -- and traffic on Twitter spiked, even more than usual. The day before, actor Ashton Kutcher beat CNN to become the first Twitter user with 1 million followers. We also learned that CNN did not actually control the highly followed 'cnnbrk' Twitter account until recently when it acquired it from James Cox, a man who had been managing it.
Large companies are realizing the value Twitter holds as a PR mechanism. Last week, a YouTube video surfaced showing Dominos employees preparing food in a let's say less-than-sanitary manner. Dominos responded over Twitter to quell concerns:
"What we've learned is if something happens in this medium, it's going to automatically jump to the next," Domino's spokesman Tim McIntyre said. "So we might as well talk to everybody at the same time."
But the rush of companies to join Twitter reminds me of the urgency companies displayed in establishing a presence in Second Life a few years back. The media covered the rise of Second Life with about as much enthusiasm -- Reuters even set up a Second Life bureau -- but eventually the coverage turned negative. Now, the companies who established a presence there find their virtual establishments largely abandoned. This, of course, was all fairly predictable according to the typical technology hype cycle.
Will Twitter go through the same backlash? Oprah's first tweet may be remembered as the beginning of the end. The New York Observer writes:
Okay, Twitter isn't exactly Second Life. It's much easier to learn how to use, and its user numbers are probably not as inflated. But still, as with Second Life, I think corporations are getting involved more out of fear of getting left behind than because they realize Twitter's potential for their business. There certainly is potential, but is this just a "let's not miss the boat" overreaction? Many companies who were slow to react to Facebook and other Web 2.0 technologies -- or even Web 1.0 technologies -- are wary of making the same mistakes. There isn't a lot to lose, as the cost of maintaining a Twitter account -- for now -- is insignificant.
For Twitter to succeed, regular people must find it useful. Otherwise, companies and celebrities will be tweeting to themselves. Questions remain about Twitter's business model -- the company still doesn't have a good way of making money.
But the real question is what do regular people get out of Twitter? Although Maureen Dowd doesn't see the allure, the New York Times laid out some of Twitter's uses:
In 2006, when Twitter was just starting, the three men felt a small earthquake in San Francisco. They each reached for their phones to twitter about it and discovered tweets from others in the city. At that moment, it dawned on them that Twitter might be most useful for something else -- a frontline news report, not just for friends, but for anyone reading.
But ordinarily, twittering is much more mundane. This is why it falls victim to the "Why do I care what you're having for lunch?" critique. Other sites offer more practical everyday uses, including looking for a job, looking for love, discussing sports and finding good music. You can even discretely use Twitter to procrastinate at work under the guise of an Excel spreadsheet. In the Stories from Your Digital Nation section of our Participate page, Corey Menscher shows how he and his wife rigged Twitter to alert them each time their unborn baby kicked. At Digital Nation, our personal favorite use of Twitter has to be this.
So, what do you think? Is Twitter useful? Tell me how you use Twitter or why you don't, and I'll post it here.
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