I wrote an article for the Life Decanted blog earlier this week about how social media tools like Twitter and Facebook are turning into modern versions of the old school country club. The article sort of evolved as I wrote it and ended up being a bit of a rant about the recent changes in social media. Since that sort of post isn’t really what Life Decanted is supposed to be about I cut myself off towards the conclusion of the piece and ended up not making a very strong case for my point of view I fear. So, I wanted to back up a little bit, expand on the idea, and try making my argument a little more clearly over here on my personal blog with a specific focus on Twitter.
Without launching into a complete history lesson, for those new to Twitter, and there are a lot of you, at least know this much. In its early days Twitter was a tool for geeks, by geeks, about geeks. It was a service that really started to gain some traction when it was adopted as the application of choice to provide public communication for geeks gathering at events like SXSW or any number of other first tier tech conferences. At its core Twitter is a fusion of an IM service, a paging service, a blogging platform, an email service, and a community cork board. It’s easy to use on a number of convenient platforms and it does what it was meant to do; blast 140 character text messages out to anyone who cared to receive them.
The wrinkle that made Twitter special was that it allowed everyone to eavesdrop on these messages and to join in on the resulting conversations or events that they triggered. The analogy I’ve always preferred is that using Twitter was like being invited to a cocktail party. You were welcome to participate in the conversation if you had something interesting to add or you were welcome to just sit in the corner, sip on your drink, listen in, and enjoying the company.
So, for example, I wasn’t able to make it to @garyvee’s impromptu wine party at SXSW in 2008 but I could follow the now legendary Vaynerchuk event online, in near real time, and interact with a few of the attendees via 140 character text messages. I wasn’t on site, but I was there on a certain level, communicated with some interesting people, and had a generally good time.
In another instance I was able to ask @scobleizer a question regarding Ansel Adam’s old darkroom while he was physically there tweeting out his observations on his cell phone. Responding back with an @ message regarding the enlarger I was able to catch Robert’s attention, whom I’ve never met in person, and get a reply in near real time. We exchanged a few more notes and for 15 minutes I was in Ansel Adam’s darkroom as well, virtually standing next to Robert Scoble, discussing dodging tools and the enormous size of the photo wash sinks.
Geek heaven for me.
For those of you familiar with the current social media community it might sound like I’m name dropping a little bit here. My very point is that, once upon a time, Twitter was a social club that was about leveling the playing field. People were not celebrities while on Twitter. I didn’t care that it was Robert Scoble talking with me about Ansel Adams. It was interesting that it was, but it could have been anyone tweeting from that darkroom and I would have been just as happy. I’m sure Scoble didn’t really care who I was outside of Twitter either. We were just two like-minded people having a conversation about Ansel Adams. It was this point that inspired me to come up with my broader country club analogy for Twitter which I think is more complete than the basic cocktail party.
Let me explain.
Early on the Twitter Club membership was small enough that we could have conversations with nearly anyone else in the club we wanted to and thus there was a sense of being peers. It was powerful and game changing. Users, like myself, isolated outside of the west coast ecosystem for example, had access to the conversations being held in San Francisco and the like in near real time. We were able to become a small part of the culture even from a distance. Similarly, those inside the west coast ecosystem saw their pool of knowledge expanded by being able to share ideas with people from all over the world. Everyone helped everyone else. Connections were made and exploited to each others benefit. It all felt very much like the country club culture that I was familiar with from my youth. I help you. You help me. We grow stronger together. The modern version of the old boys network. And it worked. At least for a while.
Soon, as the Twitter Club grew in popularity and membership expanded, various tools began coming online allowing geographically isolated members like myself to more easily find regional club members to socialize with. It wasn’t long before regional subgroups of Twitter folks, in my case the Orlando Florida area, started organizing Tweet-ups to bring a personal level of interaction to our online relationships. To this day some of my favorite people I talk with via Twitter are folks I’ve met in person at various tech gatherings and other geek activities in my local area.
Again, going back to the country club idea, these groups would be analogous to perhaps the foursome of friends that form up for weekly Saturday morning rounds of golf, mixed-doubles tennis, or a game of Bridge. We all still enjoyed talking with the whole gang back at the clubhouse afterwords, maybe over lunch, but we also enjoyed meeting up in smaller clusters for more extensive conversations as well.
For a while information and ideas flowed like never before and everyone seemed to be winning. People were able to share advice and expertise that otherwise would have been nearly impossible to gain access to in their area. Blogs grew in readership. Podcasts flourished. Software start-ups were given immediate support from the other club membership. It was exciting times.
But soon enough, as the membership continued to grow, a social pecking order began to form as it tends to do in even the most modest of clubs. Power users like @kevinrose, @garyvee, @leolaporte, @hotdogsladies, @scobleizer and a handful of others became must follows for all Twitter users. Not so much because of the consistant value of their words but more often because of the simple reach of their words. So many people started following their tweets that you were soon out of the loop if you didn’t follow them as well.
Momentum began to grow and the race to 100,000 followers was on for the self-promoters and personal branding crowd like @kevinrose, @garyvee, and @leolaporte. Admittedly, it was a game that I was swept up into for a while as well. The desire to collect followers caused people to resorted to all sorts of tricks and techniques. New Twitter users (members) would follow thousands of people right away in the hopes that they would be followed back just to push up their own numbers. They weren’t interested in actually reading the tweets of those they followed. Who can read through thousands of tweets a day? They just wanted the follower. To this day people still find it insulting if you don’t automatically follow them back.
It’s even gone so far, rather commonly really, for users to give away prizes to random Twitter followers just to get people to sign up for their Twitter feed. iPhones, XBox360s, secret discount codes and much more. Some went so far as to say that to win you needed to follow them and not follow their closest rival! People were literally buying followers because more followers is obviously better right? The more people that follow you the more people are exposed to your personal brand. Win! Or, to bring it around, the larger the membership in the club becomes the more critical it is to make sure that the bulk of them want to sit at your table during lunch if you want to become Club President.
In my opinion, this is were the collapse of what made Twitter special began.
Once Twitter stopped being about conversations and started being about collecting huge groups of followers to whom you would then market your personal brand the value quickly began to fade for me. What was once a powerful tool for information exchange has broken down into just another promotional platform that the average user was functionally being told to passively listen to. Conversation with the most popular users is now nearly impossible because of the sheer inability for the concept to scale. Top users are followed by so many and receive such a huge number of tweets each day that there is almost no chance of a conversation starting or even having your tweet to them noticed. In fact, the truth is most of the top users, even little ol’ me, are using applications like Tweetdeck to filter their Twitter stream into prioritized groups. They almost never bother to even look at the @ notes sent from random users and even tend to ignore the bulk of the tweets received from the people they signed up to follow themselves.
For these power users the concept of Twitter failed to scale at a fundamental level but they don’t seem to care that much about it. For them, Twitter is about making a series of public statements that they want heard by as many people as possible. They aren’t interested in exchanging ideas, only broadcasting their own ideas to you.
The Twitter Club is now collapsing under the weight of having too many members all trying to gain everyone else’s attention. It is becoming so large that most of us have lost our individual voice because it isn’t a civilized country club cocktail party anymore. For too many Twitter has evolved into being more like a 1980′s MTV Daytona Beach Spring Break beach party. Huge, a bit out of control, full of self-centered posers just looking for a little attention, and a gigantic stage set up near the water were celebrities show up to entertain the masses in exchange for promoting their latest project.
For those that remember what Twitter used to be, still remember how much fun the country club cocktail party was, Twitter can and does still work. There are sub-group of Twitter users that control who they follow and have rich exchanges with their circle of friends. Twitter isn’t completely broken just yet.
As I said, what is truly sad is that most new members, those brought to Twitter thanks to the likes of @Oprah and @Foxnews, don’t even realize what Twitter once was or can be. They see it as a way to get special messages sent to them from celebrities and major news organizations. They don’t even expect to have a conversation anymore and seemed shocked when they actually get a reply or comment in return.
One more example and then I’ll let you go.
Last night I was skimming through my Twitter feed and noticed a message sent out by American football star Terrell Owens. He was sitting in a plane waiting to take off and was looking for someone to tweet back to him the current score of the NBA game. And, no, I don’t ask me why he didn’t look it up on his phone. I’m guessing he was just trying to service his personal brand by generating a little Twitter noise. But that’s not why I brought this up. What struck me was that ten minutes later he sent out another tweet still looking for someone to help him out with the score. T.O. is followed by thousands of people on Twitter and yet no one, not one of his thousands of followers, including me, had taken the time to send him back a simple note with the score.
Most users don’t expect to have conversations via Twitter anymore. We don’t even bother to try it would seem. We’ve all become consumers, retweeters, and statement makers. Twitter is evolving away from what made it special in the first place: The exchange of ideas.
Is Twitter broken? No, just different. It isn’t a bad application. It has its merits and I’ll continue to use it when I want to blast general announcements to the masses and keep tabs on what is happening with my circle of friends and contacts. I’m just disappointed that it stopped being what it was. What is was, just a year ago, was so much better.
Now, don’t tell everyone but if you go over and check out the latest version of FriendFeed you might just discover that the old Twitter that I just spend 2,000 words missing so much is alive and well in a slightly different form. But, keep it to yourself. We don’t want @Oprah and @Cnnbrk to ruin this club too. See you at the party.
