What is Twitter and Why does it Appeal to Celebreties?
The recent Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN Twitter race opened my eyes to the fact that celebrities are jumping all over Twitter. Being a curious nerd who is sometimes (mildly) interested in the next Internet fad (anyone remember Geocities or Friendster?) .. and so I decided to finally take a quick look at Twitter.
… Also, being a former student of psychology, I was curious as to why celebrities seem to be falling over themselves to get on the Twitter bandwagon?
So first, what is Twitter?
In a nutshell, Twitter is a virtual-home for narcissist and people who have no lives. The narcissist send out the messages and the people who have no lives, wait around to learn what fascinating things the narcissist chooses to write about in 40 characters or less.
Note: typo there, it is actually 140 characters.
… Wow.
In nerd terms, Twitter is a micro-blogging platform where people can subscribe to your Twitter account, to receive short messages that you deem worthy of spewing. These messages can be received on various devices that are connected to the Internet. Twitter nerds refer to these messages as ‘tweets’ and they refer to the act of sending messages as ‘tweeting’.
… I’m amazed that straight men openly talk about ‘tweeting’. Anyway …
So you could write/tweet:
“I’m having a coffee.”
“I think I’ll go see the new Harry Potter film.”
“I just ate too much popcorn and I need to take a dump.”
… Man, this stuff is just too juicy to pass up on!
So why are cotton-candy-celebrities like Ashton Kutcher so enamored of Twitter?
Do I really have to answer that!
Besides the obvious, I’m also guessing they see it as a vehicle to promote themselves or maybe their next movie or maybe … some aftershave they want to sell perhaps?
I’m a capitalist and am all for it, but I think that besides stroking egos, I would guess that Twitter like applications (Twitter is a stupid easy piece of software to build BTW) will ultimately have a very limited niche appeal. I can see a sales force (for example) finding use in this sort of thing.
What will happen to Twitter?
Soon the copycats will get into the game, other social networking platforms will invest the few days it takes to integrate Twitter like functionality into their offering and soon real-time micro-blogging will be everywhere.
… I believe Facebook has already done something.
How about the people, how about the ‘Tweeties’ and the ‘Tweeters’?! … The twits?
Soon enough, people will start to tire of ‘tweeting’ and of reading other peoples ‘tweets’ because hollow entertainment such as that is like cotton candy – it taste good at first, but it gets you sick pretty darn fast.
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
April 18th, 2009 at 8:37 am
I couldn’t agree with you more… I’ll be very glad when I hear the word twitter a whole lot less
April 19th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
It’s 140 characters, not 40.
April 19th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Hi Kristin,
Oops, typo there.
Thanks for pointing it out.
Stefan
April 19th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
It’s just a fad, i don’t think it has huge staying power like face book. I was all excited when I signed up for twitter, now I do stuff on it maybe once a week.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:19 am
I think it just depends on who you are and what you personally use Twitter for. I’ve been regularly using Twitter for the past couple months, and have found it invaluable as a way of keeping up with the online design community, keeping track of useful links and inspiration, meeting others that have similar interests as I do and picking up the occasional design/coding job. It doesn’t necessarily only have to be about narcissism… Sure, I do use it as one way to promote what I do, but I do honestly enjoy answering questions and conversing with other designers.
That said, it can be a big time waster, and depending how it is used, it can simply turn into another form of online spam. I’m all for Twitter if it is used in a positive, way — primarily, as a way to build relationships and form connections with others. The rush for celebrities to join Twitter, and the whole “who can get to one million followers first” seems silly to me. In that case, it isn’t about the relationships, and is simply a hollow popularity contest.
Actually wrote a blog article on this myself recently, that covers a bit about Twitter and why/how I personally use it.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:55 am
very well put, i have lost count of the number of times i see ‘follow me on twitter’ on websites! why would i want to know what someone i’ve never met is doing at any given time? It has got to come to an end soon surely? Although it has just begun taking off, who knows when we will see the last twit?
gareth.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Ben, you make a good point, something I mentioned in passing:
“… will ultimately have a very limited niche appeal. I can see a sales force (for example) finding use in this sort of thing.”
But I guess I was not clear.
Stef
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:12 pm
I have to agree more with Benjamin on this. Although it is laughable to see people telling you such exciting news as that they just visited the toilet or finished a cup of tea, etc.
However, I have seen lately that people are using third party tools like tweetlater, etc to manage both facebook and twitter (with updates) in advance. From a marketing perspective, that is pretty powerful stuff. If you can get people reading your posts (links) etc it can be useful to manage a very large and complex conversation with a LOT of people.
At the end of the day, business promotion and marketing are essentially relationships and twitter is a tool that can enable you to build those with people you want to do business with.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Of course why use Twitter, why not use another tool?
… You can even install one of the free open source twitter-like projects on your own server and have total control.
Stefan
April 23rd, 2009 at 3:43 am
Personally i found twitter was more fun when used with friends rather than as a business tool. I may be wrong but I never found twitter that useful for sales and boosting profits!
April 29th, 2009 at 10:45 am
What I’ve been hearing: Facebook is dead, like MySpace before it. Twitter is IT. For the next 10 minutes.
Who knows. I still use them all, but not obsessively.
April 30th, 2009 at 9:47 am
Anyone know a way to track real-time conversation between friends around the world without an internet connection?
How about updating a calender and task list, or getting reminders, all via text messages?
How do I find out what people in my local area are saying without knowing how to find them or who they are?
— Twitter is the only service that can handle these things.
As for celebrities, they are not the reason for the success of Twitter, but they use it because it to help them put a stop to lies spread about them by the misleading mass media.
Then there is crowdsourcing, is there a faster way to get answer to a question, to get help with some work that Twitter? Why trawl through pages of search results when you can just send a text message to your followers asking the question?
It is thanks to Twitter that I get local news texted to me rather than having to go take time out of my day to look at RSS feeds or news websites.
… and Patrick, MySpace might be coming back soon, though most people I know are still on Facebook.
The kind of comments above are typical of those that don’t use it. Look at the public feed and you will see very few tweets are about what people are literally doing that second.
May 6th, 2009 at 3:27 am
Twitter is gonna get big like facebook and myspace, once advertisers can get there grubby paws on it. Wouldn’t be surprised to see companies heavily investing in SEO in Twitter….
“”Luciannos’s Italian restaurant half price meals….Book now” etc.
Just another platform for people to make money, oh joy!
May 6th, 2009 at 6:59 am
The huge problem that Twitter has is that the content is useless – how can you place any ads beside your typical Twitter post?
… You can’t.
Stefan
May 17th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Hi guys, I have to agree with Stefan here – Twitter is quite simply useless, it’s another way of keeping people from finding their own lives. Why should we involve ourselves with other people when we need to spend time healing our own hearts and minds, get outside and be with nature! Listen to the birds singing and be with yourself for a change, your life will feel so much better if you do
)
I think Twitter will last for another year and then die.
Blessings to you all x x