But now, a different kind of bird has entered our ocean realm.
"Beware the birds with the sharp eyes and beaks, and billion dollar bank accounts," my mother once told me. "Don't listen to what they say. Watch what they DO." [Characters in this paragraph are fictional and not intended to represent people or events in real life.]
So....I'm watching, bird watching.
Some History
After a weekend of seeing more than the normal share of the fail whale, many twitter users, are grumbling @oprah, @aplusk, @cnn (and @cnnbrk) and @ev for potentially wrecking twitter. Is this just a capacity issue? Or is there something else going on?
Last Thursday evening (technically around 2am ET April 17th) @aplusk beat out @cnnbrk in a race to 1 million users. Soon @cnnbrk and @britneyspears also had a million, the latter rewarding fans for following with concert tickets. While the @aplusk vs @cnnbrk event in and of itself was fun (I watched and admit Ashton was cute in that hat), the whole event had another side to it. In spite of Ashton talking about donating to causes to fight malaria and the triumph of one small man against "the old guard", he's not exactly "the little man" either.
On Friday the 17th, Ashton Kutcher was scheduled to go on Oprah where she would write her very first tweet. Then Ashton would go on Larry King live. Since then, Twitter has been creaking under the strain of massive user growth, with fail whales, error messages aplenty, hanging pages and more. Hence, the aforementioned grumbling.
But that's not the real problem. Server capacity can be fixed, and you can certainly choose who you follow, and just stay out of the whole thing.... Or can you? Can I? Or have we already fallen for the bait, and are in the meantime, blissfully ignorant?
You know what the motto of a fisherman is, "You wanna catch a fish, use a lure." [Fishermen quote source from my imagination.]
C'mon, a "free" service? How much longer will we stay like Pinocchio in the daze of Candyland? Some of us are starting to wake up in the belly of the whale, because the uber convenient timing of the whole Ashton, CNN, Oprah Twitter event gives rise to one main reason to ponder... Was this planned?
And, if it was planned, for whom? Let's not be naïve. There's money and influence at stake folks. And it's not just about Ashton, one man. It's about Ashton building his brand. It's about Oprah, the brand, growing market share. It's about how the media moguls are going to work this Internet thing that has hit them upside the head.
We whales are resources -- cows of the sea -- and twitter is, after all, a business venture to begin with. Let's also not forget that classic neoeconomics [the biblical theory of any business] aims at an eventual situation that is win/lose when it comes to control over resources.
In the curious case of Twitter, we happen to be the consumer and the resource. The lure and the fish. Maybe that's why it seems so confusing. But I'm pretty sure the entertainment mavens have something figured out about it all, and they are working on an action plan.
So here I am, one Twitter fail whale up in the air. Like the square in Flatland, uplifted from my plane of existance for a moment, I look around. What have happened to the twitter birds that used to carry me safely aloft when things were amiss? Why do I feel like I'm being transported by new birds, with sharp beaks and eyes, somewhere I'm not so sure I want to go? Why are there so many other whales also in the air?
Maybe things will work out groovy for everyone. I hope they do, but I maintain a healthy dose of skepticism. It's not about keeping money away from Twitter either, as I've posted about before, it's about how it is done. And that's why we whales need to keep our own eyes and baleens sharp. I am not too keen on being part of a "new and improved" TwitterLand theme park marked by increasing fees and diminishing returns. Even if they tell us -- and I'm pretty sure they will -- that it's the only way in the end that we'll be able to save the whales.
Please comment below, or, if you want to share this post, you can retweet by clicking the following button:
Posts
7 comments:
Not sure of Twitters start date but my account began in June and the service was slow and text messages so rarely arrived intact that I abandoned it for some 6 months. And while it's been fun the past 5 weeks its fast approaching the tipping point.
Or as the kids say: When moms start doing it, then it just aint cool no more.
It's common in life that what starts out as cool and underground, becomes awesome when it reaches critical mass of early adopters, then dies a slow and painful demise once the masses join in.
That process has been in place for Twitter over the past year, but in the past 30 days it has accelerated at an exponential rate.
And it's interesting to note that the reason such changes now happen so fast is due to the very nature of the medium - what used to occur via word of mouth now happens at electronic warp speed.
Since email has survived this onslaught, I'm hoping that Twitter (and Facebook) will also adapt and remain viable tools in the social media toolset.
Author X- you made me laugh with that one! The strange thing with Twitter is that the user demographic from the start was older than Facebook, it's the moms (albeit the groovy techy ones) who got hold of it first. Maybe more kids will go on when Miley Cyrus joins. ;) At any rate, the system has an evolving utility, so let's just hope it is like the lightbulb, and something that continues to illuminate lives rather than the other way around.
Global Patriot-You've hit the trend curve on the nose! It will be intersting to see if Twitter goes that route or becomes an established new service, like email as you mentioned. It's the whole monetization things that concerns me. Granted, good email service can be obtained for free, so hopefully twitter will go that route, at least for a number of years.
I see it differently. Assuming the hardware issues are overcome, the influx of the golden and mighty will bring one thing that Twitter has sorely needed. Their sponsors, their publishers, studios, charities, etc. will bring revenue. They bring "real" commercial marketers with money to spend, and assuming they find a way to make that work, Twitter will finally become a money-making entity. For the rest of us, I believe it will remain free - it will be higher-level things that draw the charges. It's likely to grow into a much bigger boat (thank you Jaws) but that's a good thing...to really have Twitter make a mark on the world, they ARE going to need a bigger boat.
I loathe the trivializing of "connections" that folks like Mr. Kutcher bring to the table, but let's face it - if there are 100,000 readers in the 1,000,000 new people these folks bring to the service, and if a tenth of them show an interest in my writing, what he's done is good. The dead accounts will fall away when the novelty clears...
Insightful piece though..
Thanks David for putting the positive way that this could work to light.
I do hope it goes that way, and I know that there are many great people working on the Twitter back end who share similar ideas to mine about how the internet should continue to be an authentic democratic tool for citizens, as well as fair marketplace. I also appreciate
what Ashton and Demi as well as Oprah are doing for charity and Twitter. There are many positives.
I put this out there just as a reminder to keep the big ship going in the direction of which you speak. I don't see why it can't, but I do have my qualms about what will happen if corporate execs with different goals take control.
For those of us who write, there is at least the positive that Oprah pushes books (even if not books like my own) and reading...and I believe a great number of her fans read...I guess we'll see if they sign up just to support her, or if they sign up to really be part of community...
Everything is relative, kiddo.
My numbers may be a few weeks old, but last I checked, Twitter had about 7 million registered users compared to Facebook's 180 million.
The acceptance of Twitter is certainly on the rise, but our personal use is completely defined by each of us by virtue of the network of people we follow. Period.
Unless they change that, it's a pretty easy job to define and refine your personal Twitter community to meet your needs, be they professional or just for fun.
If the Twitterati want to have a race to a million followers for the fun of it, good for them, and if Coke or GM thinks they're going to intrude on my Twitter stream to sell me something, they're going to have to earn their way in there, and then earn their right to remain there every single day.
Post a Comment