I never understood Twitter. Well, I think I've figured it out. What I don't understand is the hype. In this week where the Twit Machine went Public on the Stock Exchange Thingy or whatever, I can't help speculate its share price has been bolstered by much hot air and hype.
When it first emerged it was nothing more than Facebook-lite. Free to announce your inane status updates to the world - but you can't be waffling. No, 140 characters is the limit. And you can't post photos or any of that fancy stuff. Never so much fun was had since SMS was limited to 160 characters back in the 90s.
But users quickly got around these limitations. Thanks to bit.ly and other URL shortening services, images and videos were possible. Limits on its industrial lack of function were quickly circumvented, adding conventions such as the '@' to direct a message at someone, and the now infamous hashtag to impose some sort of order on the various categories of discourse (though this has infuriatingly entered common parlance in the most unnecessary way). And eventually Twitter saw the value of these hacks and incorporated them in to the user interface.
So far, big deal. None of this is groundbreaking stuff. It basically does what Facebook (and Friendster before it) did, only less well.
But then one thing happened and the penny dropped, at least for me: the London riots of 2011 erupted. One minute a kerfuffle in Tottenham, the next day Brixton, suddenly Clapham Junction was being looted. It was all very unnerving. But what I found fascinating about this whole episode is while the police struggled to keep up, so did the news agencies. BBC London had nothing but out of date information. By following a #londonriots I could see what people were saying, and reporting, in real-time. Only this way did I learn there was a mob making its way up Kennington Lane towards my ivory tower, at the time, at St. George Wharf. And just as quickly passed by on their way to rob the shops down in Battersea.
For a live event it does come in to its own, whether it's the riot at the end of my street, the results coming in on election night or live commentary on the acts at the Eurovision Song Contest as they occur. I finally understood Twitter's use case.
Which explains why journalists love it.
In a previous life, back in my student days, I was something of an activist. And I quickly discovered something about journalists: they are all inherently lazy.
Imagine my delight the first time I found a press release I had written copied-and-pasted in to the middle of a newspaper article. But I think my greatest achievement was an article I penned for the Irish Times back in 2003, arguing for the introduction of civil partnerships for gay couples (I'm slightly embarrassed to say I believed at the time that we should aim for this more easily achievable goal in Ireland rather than full-scale marriage).
And reading one of the main Sunday papers a few days later, my jaw literally dropped as I read a piece by a right-wing Christian columnist, but there was something suspiciously familiar about it. He had plagiarised my piece, point-by-point. Now he was using my arguments to argue against gay marriage, but I never thought I would see the day this person would effectively argue in favour of civil partnerships for same-sex couples.
Perhaps I digress. But I think it explains a lot about why journalists love Twitter. Saves time doing pesky things like research, just lift some tat off the social network and bam! What a scoop.
Before Twitter though, they at least maintained some sort of pretence about what went under their byline, grinning like some cheeky 12-year-old who copied your homework. These days they don't even try to cover it up. It really is disappointing to see in the press every day Twitter quoted as a source, or Somebody said something not very nice about someone else on Twitter as a story, or the just plain infantile What happened on Twitter today as an actual story.
Journalists aside, who else uses Twitter? Obviously the kind of folks who crave attention for a living: celebrities, politicians and their hacks. And the journalists fall in to this ecosystem in a particular order: tabloids following the celebs, the Mail and the Telegraph following UKIP and the Tories, The Guardian on to Labour, and Lib Dems following the other Lib Dems.
And the only other people I know who use the thing seem to be people who either (1) double-post every status between Facebook and Twitter, rendering the latter wholly redundant if you ask me, or (2) use it as a platform for other social tools like Foursquare as a means to meeting new people and proclaiming yourself mayor of the local Starbucks - this is a use case I have to admit I don't fully understand.
For the rest of us, unless civilization is breaking down and the proletariat are at the end of my street setting fire to things, or I want to see what witty thing people are saying about the live acts on X-factor, bar a few novelty accounts, my Twitter feed is pretty empty.
When it first emerged it was nothing more than Facebook-lite. Free to announce your inane status updates to the world - but you can't be waffling. No, 140 characters is the limit. And you can't post photos or any of that fancy stuff. Never so much fun was had since SMS was limited to 160 characters back in the 90s.
But users quickly got around these limitations. Thanks to bit.ly and other URL shortening services, images and videos were possible. Limits on its industrial lack of function were quickly circumvented, adding conventions such as the '@' to direct a message at someone, and the now infamous hashtag to impose some sort of order on the various categories of discourse (though this has infuriatingly entered common parlance in the most unnecessary way). And eventually Twitter saw the value of these hacks and incorporated them in to the user interface.
So far, big deal. None of this is groundbreaking stuff. It basically does what Facebook (and Friendster before it) did, only less well.
But then one thing happened and the penny dropped, at least for me: the London riots of 2011 erupted. One minute a kerfuffle in Tottenham, the next day Brixton, suddenly Clapham Junction was being looted. It was all very unnerving. But what I found fascinating about this whole episode is while the police struggled to keep up, so did the news agencies. BBC London had nothing but out of date information. By following a #londonriots I could see what people were saying, and reporting, in real-time. Only this way did I learn there was a mob making its way up Kennington Lane towards my ivory tower, at the time, at St. George Wharf. And just as quickly passed by on their way to rob the shops down in Battersea.
For a live event it does come in to its own, whether it's the riot at the end of my street, the results coming in on election night or live commentary on the acts at the Eurovision Song Contest as they occur. I finally understood Twitter's use case.
Which explains why journalists love it.
In a previous life, back in my student days, I was something of an activist. And I quickly discovered something about journalists: they are all inherently lazy.
Imagine my delight the first time I found a press release I had written copied-and-pasted in to the middle of a newspaper article. But I think my greatest achievement was an article I penned for the Irish Times back in 2003, arguing for the introduction of civil partnerships for gay couples (I'm slightly embarrassed to say I believed at the time that we should aim for this more easily achievable goal in Ireland rather than full-scale marriage).
And reading one of the main Sunday papers a few days later, my jaw literally dropped as I read a piece by a right-wing Christian columnist, but there was something suspiciously familiar about it. He had plagiarised my piece, point-by-point. Now he was using my arguments to argue against gay marriage, but I never thought I would see the day this person would effectively argue in favour of civil partnerships for same-sex couples.
Perhaps I digress. But I think it explains a lot about why journalists love Twitter. Saves time doing pesky things like research, just lift some tat off the social network and bam! What a scoop.
Before Twitter though, they at least maintained some sort of pretence about what went under their byline, grinning like some cheeky 12-year-old who copied your homework. These days they don't even try to cover it up. It really is disappointing to see in the press every day Twitter quoted as a source, or Somebody said something not very nice about someone else on Twitter as a story, or the just plain infantile What happened on Twitter today as an actual story.
Journalists aside, who else uses Twitter? Obviously the kind of folks who crave attention for a living: celebrities, politicians and their hacks. And the journalists fall in to this ecosystem in a particular order: tabloids following the celebs, the Mail and the Telegraph following UKIP and the Tories, The Guardian on to Labour, and Lib Dems following the other Lib Dems.
For the rest of us, unless civilization is breaking down and the proletariat are at the end of my street setting fire to things, or I want to see what witty thing people are saying about the live acts on X-factor, bar a few novelty accounts, my Twitter feed is pretty empty.
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