Brain Matter(s) - Thoughts on Twitter

May 23, 2011

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller’s recent column on social media in general, and Twitter in particular, prompted me to sit back and reflect on the service, how I use it and what it has meant in my personal and professional life. Had conceiving and pushing “send” on 4,000 of my own Twitter updates, and reading maybe a million more, made me – as Keller suggested – stupid? The response to the piece, especially on Twitter, has been active and polarized. He’s either dead-on right or a dinosaur pausing to complain about the cold, a guy who just doesn’t get it, this week’s version of Malcolm Gladwell.

Worth noting up top that Twitter is an easy thing for elites - especially those established enough to have mortgages or second homes - to dismiss and poke fun at, starting with its name, breezy disposition and even the language that has evolved around the platform’s basic functions. Twitter, Tweets, Tweeted, hashtags, trending topics, micro-blogging, fail whales, followers, following, it all sounds terribly sophisticated and studious. 140 characters? What could anyone possibly do with 140 characters, other than document a burp or a trip to the bathroom? The marginalizing clichés and anecdotes are, by now, endemic.

Here is my experience, and what Twitter has done for me: I have never been as well informed or strategically connected in my life. I have never been as current with those I care about and are interested in. I have never been able to identify what people are talking about, across the world and a universe of possible topics, as quickly or easily as I can today, through Twitter. I have never been as consistently entertained or amused, by the regular observations of some very smart people who are now, effortlessly, in my orbit. It is as fundamental a communications tool for me as e-mail and one that, in many ways, is much more powerful.

I work in media relations, and when I was finally getting serious about exploring social media about three years ago, couldn’t help but notice a number of the reporters I knew and worked with were already on this thing called Twitter. Many more have joined in the time since, creating a truly media-centric corner of the Web. It’s about a lot more than that corner, but if you are a communications person today who is not active on Twitter, in my opinion, you are speaking with half of your mouth or engaging with half of your brain. From the information, to the interaction, the links, the search functionality, to knowing – in an instant – exactly what people are talking about and caring about, there has never been anything like Twitter. Google took the information that exists in the world and made it readily available. Twitter does the same thing for conversations and sentiments that are happening in real-time, which is an extraordinary – and extraordinarily useful – accomplishment. @garyvee is right about the value and power of Twitter search which, alone, more than counteracts Keller’s dismissive supposition.

LinkedIn, to me, is not social. LinkedIn is something you do so Steve Jobs knows where to find you. When I first considered Facebook, well ahead of the more recent privacy concerns and other issues, I found the basic construct problematic. Why would I want to devote considerable time and effort to creating and maintaining a highly personal circle on the Web that could ultimately grow to include colleagues, bosses, family members, fraternity brothers I got drunk with and my children? I didn’t, and – although its breakaway success as an unstoppable force and the nature of what I do for a living have prompted reconsideration of this position at least a couple of times – I haven’t.

Twitter is clean, expressive and human. 140 characters, right there. Things to know, reasons to laugh, thoughts or notions to share, updates to consider, information that is helpful or silly, exchanged on your own terms, with people you have chosen to hear from. A link to the most moving or intelligent blog post you’ve ever read, right down to word that some guy on a plane just ignominiously broke out a tuna and onion sandwich, pre-takeoff, which makes you smile. For me, it has almost entirely killed RSS, and turned Google Reader from an essential “several times a day” destination to the land of 1000+ unread items. You want the most immediate, comprehensive, customizable and directionally-accurate wire service ever devised? Stop looking, it’s here. Plus, you get free and recurring access to @om’s brain.

That’s another great and fundamental thing about Twitter, you build your own experience, to suit your interests and needs. As I’ve said before, in a Tweet, it’s like the most interesting room in the world, because the whole world is in the room – and you can hear the conversations you want to, talk to the people you choose. Even the engineering behind being able to broadly broadcast messages, speak in more narrow circles through @replies, or in private through DMs (and do take care to make sure the M really is D) is genius. As Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently noted, in response to Keller’s piece, Twitter is the frame, not the picture, what’s inside is largely up to you.

Tweets, themselves, are bite-sized morsels. And if you are active on the service it does impact how you think in terms of the information you know you are going to be able to put out in this abbreviated way. It has made me a better and more careful writer. Hemingway would have loved it, and not just because it’s pretty to think so. But Twitter is not confined by its minimalism, a high percentage of Tweets are merely gateways to longer engagements – headlines or captions on a kaleidoscope of source material like news stories, columns, blog posts, @instagram photos, basically anything.

I get where Keller began his piece – as a parent slightly terrified by the prospect of putting the keys to this scary new car (social media) into the hands of his 13-year-old daughter – but not where he landed. Some of his best and brightest people (they know who they are, and so does everyone else) are embracing and using the platform as effectively as anyone, and his paper has done an admirable job of building social elements into its online presence, all the way down to giving readers pre-shortened Twitter URLs next to stories.

@jack, @biz, @ev and the gang dropped something truly incredible on the world five years ago, something as easy and elegant as it is valuable and transformational. Where it goes and what it becomes over time, who knows? But I’m glad it’s here. And I don’t feel stupid.

7:52am | URL: http://tmblr.co/Zew50y5NdLxz

(Notes: 31)