2009 June, 5th

Mihaela Lica

Phil Butler recently triggered some controversy in an article that labels Twitter as a tool that “has targeted that part of the cerebral cortex that controls laziness, and which is most commonly associated with idiocy.”

I couldn’t agree more, and despite the fact that I am an active Twitter user, I am no hypocrite. If you ask me why I spend time on Twitter, I will be brutally honest: more than anything else, this is a channel to promote myself and the Pamil Visions brand. There’s nothing wrong in doing so. Wrong it would be to start philosophizing about how Twitter has changed my life, about how I leave Twitter a richer and better person, and so on. Yes, I keep up with the trends, and the news by using Twitter, but I do the same thing using Google Trends and Google Comprehensive Alerts (“as-it-happens”).

When it comes to communicating with my network, I find the StumbleUpon toolbar somehow more meaningful and effective. Actually, I could go on making a list of ten to twenty reasons why StumbleUpon can be a better tool than Twitter in my view, but this is not the point here.

Twitter is indeed a tool, which if used correctly, like some of Phil’s commentators said; can work wonders for a brand. But, to use this tool effectively one has to actually spend time and effort to create a community, follow users, and engage in conversations (as limited as they may be, they are still possible). Or, one can be already a star to trigger unconditional followers and responses, unconditional (?) re-tweets and other types of free promotion of a brand (for example the #followfriday meme, or our recent #followsaturday for PRs).

What I am trying to say is that there is no such a thing as an altruistic use of Twitter or any other social media tool for that matter. We are all there for a reason: no one is using Twitter to save the world, or to change the world. Some of us are there for business, some others to see what’s hot and what’s not; others are there to gossip; and still others are there to see their egos growing bigger. Show me one person, just one, who spends time on Twitter out of the goodness of their hearts. There is no such animal.

So, hypocrisy aside, let’s take a realistic look at this tool. As I said, there is nothing wrong in pursuing your own interest on Twitter – the important thing is how you do it. If you are using tools to automate anything you are actually faking interaction, you are faking that you care, or even that you (as a Twitter animal) exist. Better to be honest and let us all know that you don’t have time to play #followfriday, than to have a software do the job for you!

On another note, if you pretend to be on Twitter for other reasons than the pure and honest ones, don’t expect anyone to raise you a statue. For example, Oprah is not on Twitter to interact with her audience. If you take a look at her (or any other celeb’s) lifestream, this will be pretty clear.

Probably the most relevant Twitter related rant I’ve ever read (except the regular written by my partner Phil Butler) was authored by @Mikeachim. Let me quote a few relevant, pertinent observations:

Twitter is: a time-sucking vortex of trivia and narcissism, shallower than the dew in Death Valley.

What is good about Twitter: It’s zero-effort self-publishing. You don’t have to put any real effort in, and when you have 10,000 Followers it’s easy to feel like they’re hanging on every word, encouraging you to leave world-axis-tilting messages like “I’m off to work now” and “I’ve just bought some oranges – on special offer!”. Most of the time, though, people use it to try to sell things to you. Mainly web-dev stuff. Mainly Twitter applications that get you more and more Followers. “Get 20,000 Followers in a week – all swimwear models! – for just $99.99″ That kind of thing.

Should I use Twitter?: No. It’s a phenomenal, gargantuan popularity contest where to be popular, you only have to know the most people. It’s perfect for the MMORPG generation because it’s a kind of endless levelling-up game, it’s perfect for people who want to go online without investing any real time or thought, and it’s perfect for promoting yourself and products where you get a cut. The theory is admirable – that you get to know people and chat to them at length, but in lots of directions, like a huge conference-call – but as it stands now, Twitter is swamped in chaos. It’s broken and impossible to keep up with.

Please note that Mike has a love-hate relationship with Twitter, and that his original article is a collection of pros and cons.

I chose only the cons because obviously the cons are closer to what I believe about Twitter. Like Mike, I also believe that Twitter is the social network of the moment, and that not being on Twitter means wasting possibilities. But, I will not go on praising Twitter like the second coming of the lord, I will not go on making interminable lists of Twitter tools, and definitely I will not waste more than one hour per day broadcasting myself on Twitter.

And speaking about broadcasting, this is probably the only reason why the vast majority of us are there anyway. You don’t have to take my word for it. Harvard Business research data already proved this: Twitter is a broadcast medium, not a conversation.

…there is a small contingent of users who are very active. Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production. To put Twitter in perspective, consider an unlikely analogue – Wikipedia. There, the top 15% of the most prolific editors account for 90% of Wikipedia’s edits. In other words, the pattern of contributions on Twitter is more concentrated among the few top users than is the case on Wikipedia, even though Wikipedia is clearly not a communications tool. This implies that Twitter’s resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.

I am amazed that some of the commentators on Bill Heil and Mikolaj Piskorski research bring the argument “Twitter is still in its infancy” to explain why there is such a low number of users who are actually engaged in producing content!

The truth is that no matter how much Twitter ever grows, the numbers will remain the same. For these to grow it would mean that people would never spend time on any other social network, and chat client other than Twitter. This is very unlikely.

In my opinion, once Google Wave is released, Twitter will begin to decline, and depending on how Google actually promotes its new product, Twitter’s decline will accelerate accordingly.

• 2009/02/26 -- Twitter’s B2B Value
• 2010/09/01 -- Chatroulette Mimics Twitter Where They Shouldn’t – Downtime
• 2010/08/11 -- comScore Twitter Worldwide Report: Indonesia, Brazil and Venezuela Score Top Growth
• 2010/08/09 -- Absolutely Public Relations’ big fail in the challenging world of social media
• 2010/08/06 -- How to Reach and Engage Millennial Parents: Psst Video
• 2010/08/03 -- Voice Calls are Dying and Text Messaging is the Culprit
• 2010/08/02 -- Twitter Will Die Before Bill Cosby Does

About the Author

Mihaela Lica is senior partner at Pamil Visions PR and editor at Everything PR. She is a widely cited authority on search engine optimization and public relations issues (BBC News, Force for Good, Reuters and others), with an experience of over 8 years in online PR. Mihaela writes occasionally for SitePoint, Search Engine Journal, and other online publications. Follow Mig on Twitter or send her an email at mig [at] pamil-visions [dot] com.

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