Bookmark this on Delicious

Tweet

It shouldn’t happen to a Pom! A (very personal) Defence of Twitter

By now, nobody reading this blog can be in any doubt of one salient feature of the New Media: there sure is a heck of a lot of it about. The sheer volume of material generated on-line, by the blogosphere, by MSM, desperately trying to keep up with the kids and, more recently, courtesy of the burgeoning Twitterverse, is simply mind-boggling – by any criteria.

The speed and depth (or sometimes shallowness) of this wealth of ‘stuff’ has led to vociferous calls for intelligent filters, curators and copy tasters. However, as Professor Jay Rosen pointed out in his Sydney Media140 keynote: “There is no such thing as information overload, there is only filter failure”.

The Sydney event, with three keynotes, seven panels, more than 50 speakers, not one but two cocktail receptions and an incredibly lively backchannel (which reached 300 tweets a minute at one point in the proceedings), generated a huge amount of material, some of it, naturally, more relevant than the rest.

One of the minions still sifting through the Sydney stuff for your edification is blog editrice, Dominique Jackson. Eventually, she hopes to have a post, or two, on some of the more controversial issues raised during the gig. For now, in the #TGIF spirit we like to encourage at the end of the working week, she offers a light-hearted perspective on why the Twitter naysayers only make her more determined to defend the micro-blogging service.

I recently flew half way around the world to sit in an Antipodean basement. There I sat, glued to a borrowed laptop for two and a half days, while my brain gently fried with the effort of attempting to imbibe wisdom from the distinguished speakers on show, feigning intelligence and trying my best to remember hundreds of names, faces and Twitter handles.

Well, of course, that is not all that I did last week in Sydney. Before I flew home, I managed to spend a restorative weekend with the old friends who had kindly put me up, learning a bit more about life in Australia, somewhere I have always wanted to live. For us Poms, entranced by television programmes, from Skippy, through Neighbours, and including Kath and Kim, Oz can seem like Xanadu. To us, it seems quite like the UK, but with sunshine, where everyone speaks English, the Thai food is excellent and the beach never more than a few minutes away, for frequent trips with bulging Esky, snug in the back of the Ute.

One experience however, was particularly sobering. I was thrilled to be invited to the proverbial barbie, complete with the snags and prawns I was hoping for, plus bonus pre-shucked oysters, copious sashimi and, a first for me, sparkling Merlot. However, I had no idea that I was to be the entertainment for the day.

It started harmlessly enough: with a few digs at my accent and quaint vocabulary. My own friend’s clearly well-meant boast that I spoke eight languages elicited an immediate put-down: “We only speak two languages here: ‘Strine & Drunken ‘Strine….”

But it was the mention of Twitter that had me reaching for rather more Merlot than might have seemed polite.

“Why on earth would I want to know when you were off to the dunny or that you were looking forward to the Vegemite sandwich you’d packed for Morning Tea?” asked my host, rather more aggressively than I thought entirely necessary. By now, of course, he was also brandishing a large barbecue fork.

Reader, I did start to defend, explain and forfend – but I was seriously outnumbered by natives, and besides, the laughter prompted by the dunny reference, outlasted my admittedly feeble attempts. I confess: I gave up then and there.

Later that evening, sitting up in my mates’ spare room, another borrowed laptop on my knee, still slightly smarting from my unexpected afternoon in the lions’ den, I – quite naturally, I am sure you will agree – logged onto Twitter.

If you don’t tweet on a Saturday, I highly recommend you do, at least once. The whole tone of the Twitterverse slows down for the weekend, professional facades come down and you can find out unexpected things about Tweeps you think you know well.

Within a few minutes, my confidence was totally restored. It was clearly not just me then who thinks that Twitter is for more than #lunch? There is the small matter of my 1800 followers for a start, a few score of whom I had happily managed to meet IRL during the Sydney event – (you know who you are!)

Among a raft of other subjects, there was a heated discussion about the imminent Wallabies vs England Twickenham rugby date, to which I was able to contribute. Good thing I didn’t put any of those slippery Aussie dollars on Wilko and gang, though….

I spied a Tweet from my mate (not IRL, but you know) @theaardvark, asking if anyone knew where he could pick up a second hand top hat for a fancy dress Moulin Rouge gig at the end of the month. Paul and I tweet regularly if not frequently, mainly about music. When he’s not helping people with pesky tax returns, he is spinning top tunes at gigs across the Midlands.

Well, it just so happens, that my OH, (aka “Evil Newspaper Executive” Tim), does possess an old topper, which had sadly fallen victim to our in-house rodents. They may have only nibbled the brim, but it simply did not pass muster for Royal Ascot in June. (Yes, OH is also quite posh, BTW).

I explained as much @theaardvark, and once we had established that the size was probably right and that the nibbling didn’t matter, his problems were solved – all within minutes of posting the first top hat tweet.

“How much do you want for mouse-nibbled topper?” he asked in a DM. “Wouldn’t dream of asking for a penny or even a pound” I replied. Forget #Trafigura, if that’s not the power of Twitter, I’m not quite sure what is…