Bruce Hammond has a nice post about how communicating through social media has just become like second nature to him. So much so that he pointed out the irony of his debating the usefulness of social media using one of the primary social media outlets: A blog. I suspect I had the exact same strange sensation as Bruce did as I read the gobs of comments on this Acronym post about the number of educational offerings about social media.
Last night I got my election news by hitting refresh at Twitter’s mobile website. No television, no MSNBC.com, no radio: Just Twitter on my cell phone. And it was perfect. There were several people on my follow list tweeting about every 30 seconds, and I was as up-to-date as anyone else in the neighborhood. Perhaps more up-to-date, as my tweeple were watching all manner of news stations: CNN, BBC, all the major American television affiliates, etc.
Increasingly I find myself going to search.twitter.com for news. Did the Redskins win? A quick search there will tell you. A few members message me through Twitter more often than they call or e-mail me. And I know a Realtor who has gotten two clients from it.
Twitter is one of those tools that has now become invisible to me, probably like e-mail has become invisible to the average office worker. There are other tools like it that are invisible to their users.
Clay Shirky says "Communications tools don’t become socially interesting until they become technologically boring. The invention of a tool doesn’t create change; it has to have been around long enough that most of society is using it. It’s when the technology becomes normal, then ubiquitous, and finally so pervasive as to be invisible, that the really profound changes happen … and invisible is coming."
For many of your members, invisible is already here.
Tags: associations, social media, Clay Shirky, Twitter
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks a lot for the links, Ben! Appreciate it much.
Outstanding quote from Clay Shirky. That is really interesting, and the fact that Twitter has become invisible to you is a good sign that it is becoming more and more pervasive. I have seen a LOT more members of ours beginning to use it, following our organization’s presence. That’s a great thing in our efforts to keep them as up to date in real-time as possible. In addition, we are beginning to use it more for finding out more about what they are doing and wanting.
Anyway, nice post, and again, thanks for including my posts!
Ben,
An honest comment/question — I’m not just being a smartass.
You say, “Last night I got my election news by hitting refresh at Twitter’s mobile website.”
You also could have hit refresh at, say, CNN’s website.
You say, “Perhaps more up-to-date, as my tweeple were watching all manner of news stations: CNN, BBC, all the major American television affiliates, etc.”
So the news you were getting still depended on network televisions that depend on ad revenue to function.
You say, “I find myself going to search.twitter.com for news. Did the Redskins win? A quick search there will tell you.”
So will a quick search on news.google.com. Or washingtonpost.com. Or, in fact, redskins.com.
So … in these cases … what does Twitter replace? I assume it’s the “one source” and cellphone integration that makes it valuable, and I’m not saying that’s NOT valuable, but how does the “social” aspect of this “social” media come into play in the examples you outline here?
And, if the ad-supported sources being relied upon by the Twitter users for their reporting cease to exist because no one is watching their ads, will you continue to get the value you outline here from Twitter (which has yet to define a sustainable business model)?
Kevin, your questions are hard to answer. It’s as if you’ve asked me how people will communicate if the Pony Express loses its revenue sources, and what are the benefits of jet travel over bicycle travel, and what will happen to television when everyone can just skip the ads with TiVo? The difficulty I’m having explaining Twitter’s value is just another sign to me that Twitter’s invisible. Here goes…
Yes, as you point out, Twitter is a quick and easy one-stop shop for just about anything I need to know. For me, it’s more accessible than any other source of information on what’s happening right now and very concise (you can only say so much in 140 characters). And in some cases, the information comes from people I trust and whose opinions I respect. Plus it’s mobile.
In the case of the election: None of the affiliates were updating their websites every 30 seconds. My friends on Twitter did, though. In the case of the Redskins: All the sites you mention are bulky and slow to load on a mobile phone, save Google. (I have discovered that Googling a team name on a day that they’re playing will return a score at the top of the page.) In both cases, I just knew I could get the information quicker on Twitter than anywhere else. It’s not that there aren’t alternatives out there. It’s just that, for people like me, it’s the best alternative.
I suppose the “social” part of this social media is the fact that, by and large, tweets are user generated content.
As for revenue models, well, it seems all the traditional MSM are disrupted by the web. I’m less concerned about Twitter’s revenues than I am for the likes of WaPo. And so what if Twitter folds? No big deal. Some wiz kid has already invented its successor.
Who will report the news is a huge issue in our society. But that’s not my monkey. I don’t intend to enable the MSM anymore. News outlets like Christian Science Monitor will innovate, survive and get my attention in the future (or at least the attention of the people who tweet the news to me).
And keep in mind that I just really don’t like television, and only watch about an hour per month. I’d imagine I’m in a tiny minority there. So there are still plenty of suckers for the MSM to advertise to. 😉