http://issuu.com/Convergencemag/docs/spring09/33
To Tweet or not to Tweet?
Pat Lovgren
When Jack Dorsey posted his first message, “inviting coworkers” on Twitter, he was shocked by the number of people who were ready to take him up on his offer.
After a period of steady growth over its first two years, the social networking internet service co-founded by Dorsey and colleagues Biz Stone and Evan Williams, has exploded, increasing in size by nearly 1,000 per cent during the last six months to more than 8 million visitors. Web trafficking and ranking website, compete.com ranks Twitter the internet's third leading social networking service behind only MySpace and Facebook. Early adopter Bill Dunphy of the Hamilton Spectator believes Twitter is on the verge of breaking into the mainstream.
“I expect a year from now there won’t be any question about whether Twitter will break out,” says Dunphy, who uses it like other journalists to both provide links to their stories as well as to keep tabs on various newsmakers. “Similar to digital recorders, soon people will be wondering why others aren’t using it, as opposed to why they are.”
Regarded as the web’s own ‘text messaging’ service, Twitter enables users to send and receive messages known as ‘tweets’ to the people they are connected to. The messages can be viewed on the Twitter website as well as with SMS and SRS feeds via cell phone text messaging along with a variety of other applications. It is this instant communication interface that explains why the medium has gained such a widespread following. But it’s Twitter’s ability to connect a wide variety of people that makes it so appealing.
Although Twitter’s growth didn’t match what Facebook and Google posted in their infancy, its rapid adoption is certainly significant. Though largely untouched by the general public, debate continues to be debate over whether it will go the way of other social networking services such as Friendster and Bebo, which despite achieving initial success in North America, have stagnated, or whether it will follow the path of MySpace and Facebook into the the mainstream culture.
Steve Rubel, an expert in the field of global technology, media and online trends, says Twitter will have to beat the odds in order to survive.
“No single online community has ever had significant staying power,” says Rubel, whose Micro Persuasion blog on digital trends attracts 50,000 daily readers. “The only two have been Amazon and eBay, which are both proposition-based.
“People tend to get tired of one network after a period of time and move on to another.”
So what’s the definitive answer? Journalists’ opinions vary.
“The Fence-Sitters”
“I'm still trying to figure out what all the fuss is about,” says the Toronto Star’s sports media expert Chris Zelkovich. “So far, Twitter hasn't really given me anything I couldn't get elsewhere.”
Zelkovich’s view is shared by many journalists who have heard of Twitter and its attributes, but aren’t sure it can help them with their work. They have co-workers who use it, but are not sure why. They seem open to the idea, but don’t think it is important enough to be given much attention.
Zelkovich says he was told to sign up on Twitter because it would help for his stories, but he hasn’t seen that happen.
“I signed on because I was told it was a good tool for keeping tabs on contacts etc.,” he says. “So far, I haven't succeeded.”
Brad Schultz, the assistant professor of journalism at University of Mississippi, has heard good things about Twitter, but like Zelkovich has not felt compelled to sign up for it.
“Based on what I do know I don't see it as competing 'medium,’ but rather as another new technology that journalists are using to help them report,” Schultz says. “Right now, email and texting seem to fit all those qualities, but that could obviously change.”
Schultz says it’s an emerging technology, and it’s too early to predict where Twitter’s future may lie.
“Who could have guessed 10 ten years ago that Facebook and MySpace would be where they are today?" says Schultz, who in addition to his work at U of M is also the editor of the Journal of Sports Media, an online blog. "If the technology is fast, inexpensive and appeals to a large segment of the population then it will become accepted.”
“The Doubters”
Like any new medium, Twitter has had its share of problems. Whether it’s people impersonating celebrities and athletes, hundreds of accounts including Barack Obama’s being hacked into or difficulties associated with signing up. According to many critics, however, the service’s main challenges will be in its ability to maintain its rapid growth and to achieve staying power in an ever-changing technological world.
David Akin, the national affairs correspondent for Canwest news service, says Twitter can be helpful in assisting journalists, but doesn’t see it as a medium that will achieve widespread success.
“There is no evidence to suggest that Twitter alone will force the kind of business changes that YouTube, for example, may force,” Akin says.
He says Twitter needs to become more user-friendly and must clean out its bugs if it intends to draw mass appeal.
“Twitter’s developers need to make its search function much more robust and Twitter’s partners need to do a lot more work to make it easier for users to read tweets, combine tweets with audio and visual content, re-tweet, sort tweets, search tweets, filter tweets for it to become a game-changing service,” Akin says.
Rubel also has his doubts, saying unless social networking sites like Twitter come up with ways to constantly improve their services, users will find alternate mediums.
“They need to remain innovative in order to survive,” says Rubel, who is actively followed by more than 17,000 on Twitter. “People may become frustrated by the limitations of Twitter and go to other places.”
Rubel says part of Twitter’s problem is that unlike Facebook it is difficult to follow conversations. He says unless Twitter fixes these types of problems, its success will not carry over for the long-term.
He thinks Twitter’s future – if approached in the right way – should involve using the medium as a platform for other services such as TweetDeck, which can then use the conversations found on Twitter in different ways that will be more user friendly.
Currently, services like TweetDeck allow users to view multiple Twitter conversations at the same time, thus solving one of the main issues Twitter has. Rubel says add-ons like this are used in conjunction with Twitter in the proper way, the potential is there for Twitter to develop into something truly unique in the future.
“I think they (Twitter) can become a Microsoft,” Rubel says. “I think what Microsoft is to the desktop, what Google is to searching, Twitter can be to social networking.”
“The Believers”
The last group of people can be characterized as devoted “Twitterers” who use the service daily and are optimistic it will achieve future success.
An avid user with over 1,300 followers, Charles Cooper is optimistic of what the future might hold for Twitter, but says it needs some sort of groundbreaking moment for it to secure a spot in popular culture.
“In 1997, ’98 and ’99 not many knew what blogs were,” says Cooper, who has covered technology and business for more than 25 years and now works for CNET News. “But after 9/11 there was a proliferation of them because they allowed people on site to provide commentary. It was a watershed moment. I think there needs to be something similar for Twitter.”
Cooper says Twitter is slowly catching on in mainstream culture, and points to the segment on it done by Jon Stewart’s, The Daily Show in which the frequent use of Twitter by members of the US Congress is mocked, as an illustration of how far it has come.
He says he cannot be sure what the future will hold, but that if it continues to grow, there are infinite possibilities.
“Who knows what will happen as more and more people discover it,” Cooper says. “It is still growing and there is no reason to think it may retreat. I think it is going through a growing stage like any other new technology.”
Dunphy says he expects Twitter to continue its rapid growth in the coming months. He says Twitter’s mobility and the fact it has solved most of its technical issues related to the websites’ up-rate and security will only help in its recruitment of users.
“I think Twitter can hit Facebook numbers, which is around 20 to 66 million users,” Dunphy says. “In the past five or six months it has broken out. I have no doubt it will continue to grow in the future.”
Ian Capstick, another devoted ‘Twitterer,’ who is also the founder of the progressive communications and training website, mediastyle.ca, says people should embrace the type of communication Twitter provides. He says Twitter shouldn’t be viewed as a competing medium, but rather as something journalists should use to augment their work.
“Twitter is a new tool for communication that traditional journalists have to adapt to,” says Capstick, who is also the former press secretary of the NDP. “It’s another element that journalists and news organizations have to be plugged into and something that is going to get journalists in trouble if they stay away from it.”
Capstick says initially, there are always critics who are hesitant to adopt certain technologies, but in the end they become converted.
“The same question has been asked with every technology advance will it survive? and if you look at the history, only one element has been lost: the telegraph,” says Capstick, who estimates 1.7 million Canadians will be using Twitter by 2011. “We haven’t lost faxes, telephones, email, etc, so it should be around for a long time.”
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