I ruminated elsewhere at the end of last year what would be the next big, breakthrough social media 'thing'. We didn't have long to wait as Twitter has found itself with a bigger hammer to bang on the door of the mainstream.
It's not through yet, but crikey is it making a din. You can't turn on the radio or TV without someone twittering on about it. The Today Programme blazed a trail that Chris Moyles and Nihal have followed. Stephen Fry (200,000 followers!) has started the very public trend of Twitter becoming the latest stage for celebrities and Jonathan Ross, Dave Gorman, Philip Schofield and others have joined him in the limelight. Crikes, even Giles Brandreth is Tweeting and The One Show did a feature last week. It's all gone just a bit nuts, really.
Actually, I think Mr Fry is almost single handedly responsible for the UK TwitterStorm, because of THAT conversation on The Jonathan Ross show and then his getting stuck in a lift, using Twitter to communicate whilst trapped. In the US, I'd argue that it was this picture of the downed flight on the Hudson that made people sit up and take notice. In the UK though, we needed a celebrity or two to do the same. Whatever.
But the public sector isn't behind the door either. There are numerous Local Authorities with Twitter accounts now, using them in various ways to pump out information to their followers. Similarly, a good few local gov employees and civil servants are using Twitter to chatter...I've made a load of new contacts through tweeting.
In fact, perhaps TALK started something of a public sector mashup craze with our Public Sector TwitterLeague (which is now getting so long it needs a rethink) back in September 2008 as we now have a plethora of twitter mashups and apps that allow us to see what's going on around the twittersphere.
Tweetminster, anyone? A cracking site that allows you to track the rising number of MP Twitter accounts and tweet them. Good idea.
How about cllrtweeps? A similar offering but focused on Local Government Councillors. Another good idea.
But, I have a slight concern about celebrity and elected official use of Twitter and it's this. Twitter is a two way conversation...it works because you follow me and I follow you (if I choose). It doesn't work half as well when I follow you and you don't follow me because you're a celeb or my MP or Councillor. I may as well just write you a letter if you choose to just say you're listening...how do I know that I'm being heard and how do I know that I'm part of your conversations? How do I know that you care about what I'm saying? OK, celebs I'll let you off the hook there, but elected officials - if you say you are listening...prove it.
Heaven knows how Stephen Fry copes with the 50,000 people he follows, but he's an outlier and most won't have to cope with such numbers, but you have to think about how you will handle your Twitter presence all the same.
Coming back to innovative twitter usage, we also have we20, a movement that aims to replicate the G20 meetings by holding similar discussions across the UK (and beyond) and will undoubtedly feed back as part of the process.
Then there's Twestival, which aimed to raise money for charity by holding local 'TweetUps' and auctions for donated stuff. It went down very, very well, and there were over two hundred meetings all across the world. $250,000 raised. That's impressive and all organised through Twitter.
I also have to mention Twaffik...an initiative of ours that is using Twitter to crowdsource traffic information in city regions. Manchester first, but I can exclusively reveal (get me!) that London and Liverpool will be coming online very soon.
The mashups, applets and sites are just too numerous to mention and are popping up left, right and centre. The pace of Twitter, the imagination of it's fervent followers and the capability of tech folks to turn the twitter streams into useful information is, quite frankly, staggering.
And, in there, as I've said before, is Twitters nemesis - itself and it's popularity. Filtering out the conversations and twitter streams requires effort, thought and a decent twitter application on your machine. More than that it raises the question of whether Twitter will become the next rhetoric vehicle...as I've alluded to above, will elected officials just say that they're listening, when in fact they're just bandwagon jumping?
I've said it before and I'm saying it again. Twitter has real power to create a new mode of conversation, enabling you to tap into the ebb and flow of dialogue that you want to be a part of...but if you are an MP or a Councillor you better think about your 'following' strategy, how you're going to filter out the conversation and how your chosen twitter strategy is perceived by your followers.
It's a crazy world in there, but jump in...you'll enjoy the Twitterverse. Heck, you could even follow me. I'm @paulcarruthers. TALK is @talkwiki.
Yes, who would have thought that Twitter would be such a success. I started to Twitter early last year and I'm overwhelmed at the diversity of accounts that has since developed. Here are the top 10 most extraordinary twitter updates some are very interesting http://mashable.com/2009/04/10/extraordinary-twitter-updates/
The thing about us humans is that we have a fabulous filtering mechanism built in to our brains. We can stand in the middle of a crowded room with 100s of conversations going on all around us, and be able to tune into just the one we're engaged in; or we can tune in and out of other conversations we want to eavesdrop upon.
Until Twitter and its like is able to create a system that is a seamless and simple to use as this, I cannot see that it will ever be anything more than a mad "noise" through which the important messages only occasionally get noticed, e.g.; Lilian's link to the top ten. How many other interesting, news breaking, important messages have been overlooked though?
That's a nice observation Bruce, but I think that some of these noise filters are in process, either through the application of additional tools on top of Twitter or through the way people use it.
Take the use of the hashtag (#) for example. It's used to mark a tweet as being part of a stream of conversation about a particular topic. So, whilst you obviously can't 'hear' everyone who is talking about the tagged topic at the same time, you can go bag and do a filtered search on that topic later on.
One thing we can't do as humans is go back and listen the 100s of conversations that have already happened around us, nor can we find out who was involved in that conversation. Twitter is a great tool for doing just that.
It's never going to be the same as f2f conversation, but it is incredibly useful in other ways.
-pc.