Twitter ye not (Twitter.com)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	Twitter.com
Date:	09/10/09 (82 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Useful nosey tool for quotes

Disadvantages: Boring

Where as most social networking sites are about normal people using all sorts of personas to meet other people, Twitter is the opposite, prominent people wanting you to know exactly who they and are and how important and famous they are, the luxury of denying you access to their twittering if they so choose backing up their status to the mere mortals, the basic gimmick here being the chance to interact with celebrities, making you feel important, even though the important peoples twitter and social networking accounts are often run by their PRs, as we found out with Vanessa Feltz last week, she presumably too busy massacring the sweet trolley to have time for the 'proles' by typing mindless nothings online. Les face it what normal person wants to know if Feltz has just had a dump or been doing sudukos. Celebrity is supposed to be all about glamour and not being like us.

Recently on local radio Prime Minister elect David Cameron was equally dismissive of this new interactive media, memorably blurting out live on air that "The trouble with Twitter, is too many twits might make a tw*t", the very same tw*ts that will probably be voting for the public school toff come next May if the Tories can grasp the importance of the modern social networking sites for wining younger votes. These sites are where everybody is right now "Dave", whether at work or at play, and so the people that use them are certainly not the 'T' word.

Dooyoo, alas, have yet to grasp the relevance of it, effectively using Twitter with their account purely as a non interactive message board, no better than their own community page for communication to the members. For some reason we can't actually 'tweet' dooyoo and no replies are ever printed up on their tweet page for those who can, negating the point completely. It's great that they are grasping new media but they need to exploit it fully. Come on dooyoo, let us tweet back!

Anyone can open an account online using a cell phone number and email address (as verification), the email to send you confirmation of your name and password etc, and a cell phone number so you can text into your account page (to tweet). You can also tweet online through the normal method.
Once you have created your own account name and page (wall) you can tap in 'tweets' of up to 140 characters (sms compatible) and comment or text on other members tweets as well as filling your page with mindless waffle. The Wall will list the last tweet you have sent, be it to you're followers (friends) or people on your watch list, these called 'followers', who have replied to your tweet or just written a tweet. You can box tick things in settings to decide what goes on your tweet wall. The search for other members isn't great as it just lists them all at once, no region or country listings...

At first when Serena Williams accepts you as a follower you think she personally did it. When you see she has 1.3 million followers you begin to see how commercial the site has become. But there is still an intimacy to be had with celebrity here; the less famous they are the more you will get, to lose that anonymity why they join these sites.

Many celebrities interact on their personal fan site webpage's for hardcore fans or indeed through Myspace but this is more on the facebook line where you are seeking intimacy by being accepted by someone. Obviously many of the tweeter celebrities may be fake and so Twitter has introduced a verification certificate tick for all those who are who they say they are, presumably Twitter ringing the phone numbers. That data base of celebrity cell phone and normal numbers is the twitter people's real goal if you ask me.

Obviously 99% of us are not famous or remotely importantly and so nobody cares if you are watching the X Factor or about to eat Rice Crispies. My Wall has none of that cr*p on it. This is not a place to build up "friends". What it is access to people that you wouldn't normally have a portal to speak to, their lives all about being apart from people like us. As I'm trying to build a career in sports writing I can add professional cricketers and get into to some sort of conversation with them to pick up gossip. Some tend to be very honest with their tweets and you see a whole new side to them (Graeme Swann) and some totally blank you. Others make a couple of entries and just give up on their accounts. Nuggets of inside information are what sports writing is all about and I will join any site that gets that gen.

Some celebrities and sports people translate the amount of followers they get as fans and so trying to match their egos. But they often use their media coverage to increase their tweets and facebook friends, Richard Bacon a particular tart for this. But Twitter works and for some reason enough people need to know what famous people do all day, and, indeed, reassured to discover that low and behold they do exactly the same boring things as we do in life. This, of course, is not the point of celebrity, new media smashing down the barriers between the celebrated and the plebs.

Its believe the site has eaten up $57 million dollars to get as big as it has but only generated around $400,000 profit, advertising not allowed on site. It's unsure how they intend to make money with their model and rival social network sites are expected to buy it up soon. 40% of tweets were classed as babble whilst 37% were classed as relaying information or conversation. There is junk and company sponsorship there too and Twitter does share your information with third parties to increase that spam.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/29/da vidcameronapologyradiotwitter

Summary: The latest social networking frivolity..