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

Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Friday, November 13, 2009 Discussion: 4 Comments

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.
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Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Friday, November 6, 2009 Discussion: 5 Comments

The overwhelming vote for Speaker of the Sydney Gig went to Al Jazeera’s Riyaad Minty. Below, Paul Farrell, guest blogger for day two, explains why he had the audience in thrall.

Riyaad Minty, Head of Social Media at Al Jazeera was the next keynote speaker, and delivered a case study about reporting on the recent Israeli offensive in Gaza. His insights into the professional practice of journalism and how social media was used is a fascinating insight into the way social media can be used effectively in conflict reporting.

His discussion did not just focus on Twitter, but other online tools like Ushudhi as well, which was used to create maps about the conflict areas in real time. Al Jazeera created ‘Your Media’ when the offensive began, which allowed for people to contribute their own stories directly to the site, and according to Riyaad worked effectively for a few days until the Israeli military clamped down on communications.

The war was also micro reported via the Twitter account @AJGaza. Al Jazeera also permits creative commons for all their raw footage, to allow democratic access to their footage. Looking at all of these new ways of engaging with new media meant that this talk was as much a case study of Al Jazeera itself as it was of reporting in Gaza.

Listening to Riyaad, it’s not hard to see why Al Jazeera is one of the most credible and engaging news organizations on the planet. As Riyaad says, “its about trust, and openness within your organization”. With people like Riyaad leading the way in engaging with social media, it shows how the old professional practice of journalism can be combined with these technologies, to provide us with a comprehensive vision of events going on around the world.

But Riyaad also gave a warning about social media and that “ at the end of the day it’s a technology, and it’s a tool”. This was a welcome caution about the supposedly revolutionary nature of these online tools. Its not the tools that define what journalism is, it’s the ever-present desire to expose the truth and hold the powerful to account.

Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 Discussion: No Comments

We saw a watershed of sorts in our brave new real time world last week, with the online response – both to Trafigura’s super injunction against the Guardian and the Daily Mail’s shockingly misjudged column on the death of Stephen Gately – showing that networks like Twitter now wield tangible power – to influence main stream media outlets, the law establishment and even the once omnipotent advertisers, without whom the MSM would simply cease to exist.

When global consumer behemoths like Nestlé and good old high street stalwarts such as M&S start bowing to the collective howl of the Twitterverse, something seismic is clearly shaking up the traditionally tight and fairly impersonal channels via which big brands once communicated with their grateful customers. As the likes of the Mail, Carter Ruck and Habitat UK have already discovered to their cost, there is no ignoring the democracy, transparency and the sheer speed of these new networks.

Next Monday, 26th October, 200 top marketing movers and shakers will gather at RIBA in London for Media140’s Brands Event, scrutinising every aspect of the impact of this new communications culture on the traditional advertising/marketing approach.

Below, Media140’s Gen Y expert, Kristian Carter, explains why consumer empowerment, direct connections and emotional ties are the only way forward for savvy brands who need to connect with the millions of younger consumers who are already ignoring the spoon-fed slogan in favour of engagement and experience.

For any brand wanting a healthy chunk of the key youth demographic – (and let’s face it, which major brand doesn’t?) limiting consumer interaction to publishing the e-mail address of your customer relations department clearly is not going to cut it any more.

Intelligent companies are starting to realise they have to phase out yesterday’s glossy, impersonal messaging, which is both manufactured and tightly controlled at corporate HQ. Brands will still need to be good at saying things – but they will need to make the things they say feel real – mainly by building experiences that establish a concrete and direct connection between the consumer and the brand. The future is in personal connection and emotional ties, empowerment and personal decisions.

Generation Y favours ‘enabler brands’ – those which allow users to be creative – on their own terms. Media giants, including Channel 4, Stella Artois with film, Carling with music sponsorhip, Apple, Nokia, Technics, Adobe, Sony, Montana Spray Paint and Vans, with skating, have all been leaders in this space.
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Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 Discussion: 2 Comments

The overwhelming majority of this blog’s readers will be Twitter users; most of them will also be long-term ones. We were all tweeting, re-tweeting and tweeting up many moons before MSM caught onto our secret social network, long before it became the favoured new toy of marketing and PR types and way before the inevitable squeal of the celebrity sign-up.

In this thought-provoking post, David White – an expert on Massively Multi-player on-line games – suggests that, once they reach a certain critical mass, social networks inevitably lose their lustre and wonders whether Twitter’s recent slide towards the mainstream may see many of us migrating to alternative platforms.

Twitter is now at the top of my ‘attention stack’, or so I realized not long ago. My morning starts with Twitter, moves through email and ends up in a Word doc or the browser.

One simple 140-or fewer-character-question later and I discovered that for most respondents, Twitter was also their initial point of contact with the web, some people even breaking down their routine to the granularity of DMs, then @s, then email – (clearly researching Twitter via Twitter is a crime against academia, but I can probably live with that).

My own response to this was to suggest that many of our networks, such as work email, are fixed for us, but because we can choose whom we follow on Twitter, we are therefore more strongly attracted to it. It was quickly pointed out to me that the reality is much more complex than that.

Twitter has, increasingly, become something I ‘need’ to look at for work; it has become central to my job and, in that process, it has lost some of its lustre. I find myself following individuals because they are influential in my field, not necessarily because they are the sort of people I would enjoy spending time with down the pub. Important project information comes to me via DMs because some of those whom I follow are aware that Twitter is what I go to first.

Ok, so enough of the anecdotal:

My point is that: once a social media platform gets big enough in terms of user numbers, it is in grave danger of losing its original vibrancy. This is not a technical problem but a social effect. There is a tipping point whereby, once you know that your boss or your mum have profiles in a platform, it subtly changes in character. You may feel the need to expand your network beyond its initial comfort zone, as you are followed or friended by a new layer of acquaintances or colleagues. The tone of your communications may well change accordingly.

Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Sunday, September 6, 2009 Discussion: No Comments

Is “Community” the most over-used, misunderstood and still hotly disputed term inevitably bandied around whenever folk are gathered to talk of Social Media? In this admittedly unscientific, but very engaged investigation, Dominique Jackson offers a highly personal perspective:

It was when I overheard the extraordinary statement which opens this post title that I was finally moved to sully my otherwise fairly tightly focussed photo-journalism blog, with a dip of the toe into the lively debate on the existence – or otherwise – of online communities.

The statement was made by a well-known newspaper journalist, dining at an adjacent table in an Italian joint, much frequented by senior media types. At the time, she was musing on the mental health of the readers who evidently took time and trouble to leave online responses to her weekly column.

That incident and my resulting post were in February 2009 – which already seems an aeon ago – particularly given the spectacular rise in the MSM profile of Twitter over the period in question.

I still have no pat answers to the vexed question of online communities. The potential of the real time web and the Social Media communities in question are still in their relative infancy; we may not yet have the perspective to judge their merits or otherwise.

Editor: media140 Editor Posted: Monday, August 24, 2009 Discussion: 2 Comments

Twitter is the technology that has defined the Internet & web use over the last three years, used to report major news events, publicise celebrities and even stage protests. But how did it all start? And with all of its indisputable success to date, where can it go from here?