Twitter does a lot of things really, really well. As a newly minted entrepreneur, it allows me to send a link to this nascent blog to, at latest count, 100 people, the largest proportion of whom only recently started following me.
But I have few misgivings about this mini-blogging sensation.
Did we need another vehicle that offers little context, detail or thought? At 140 characters per posting, there isn’t a lot one can say, except slogans, headlines, snarky asides and other markedly brief quips. You cannot explain anything, including your own post. You can instantaneously post whatever thoughts or actions are right at the top of mind — so, there’s little chance to reflect. Plus, your audience is somewhat invisible — no pesky “To” field on the email, let alone an address to write on an envelope. There’s not even an automatic spell check to halt you on your forced march; oh, the red squiggle is there, but largely there is no pause between thought and action.
You can pass along to your followers something you received from someone else. All it takes is two clicks — again, not much cogitation or consideration. No integral understanding that what you’re passing along has the imprint of your approval and support. More on that in a minute.
You can reply to a posting – but the original post, which most likely your followers don’t have, isn’t there. So, some recipients will be wondering what the heck is going on.
I speak from bitter recent experience, as I furthered a Twitter discussion of which I wasn’t a part, and about which I did not know squat — this is dangerous. I succumbed to the excitement of the moment and didn’t consider the wider context of my forwardings, retweetings and summaries. It was wrong, and I apologized. That’s not happening again.
Twitter’s great utility is speed — it forces you by its nature to focus and write crisply. That’s also its great failure, especially during a time of historic complexity in so many aspects of our society.
I’ll still use it, but you can bet I’ll be a lot more careful.
“Did we need another vehicle that offers little context, detail or thought? At 140 characters per posting, there isn’t a lot one can say, except slogans, headlines, snarky asides and other markedly brief quips.”
Well said, Sean. Twitter is about sound bites. I heard similar sentiments from other PR educators at the Edelman New Media Summit just last week in D.C. But the comments applied to social media more broadly, not just Twitter. We heard presentation after presentation pointing to the need for terse messages that can connect to people in seconds. One speaker asked how many of us were including messaging for mobile devices in our curriculum — mobile devices with 2 x 2 inch screens. You can’t ask for a lotta substance in a space that small.
I also watched my Twitter screen as folks at the conference attempted to tweet its content to followers. More sound bites, most of little value.
As a PR practitioner and educator for about 35 years, I’ve come to accept that the PR pros have no control over the evolution of media channels. We simply learn to use them to represent our clients in an ethical manner. If that means we need 140-character messages, then that’s what it means. (I’m told the average tweet is absorbed in about 1.7 seconds — a tailor-made medium for folks with ADD!)
Twitter has its uses, as you point out. And it has certainly connected me to a lotta folks I didn’t know before. But if it’s thoughtful discussion and reflection you seek, Twitter is not the place. Like it or not, though, Twitter has a prominent place in the PR tool kit, and you ignore it at your peril.
Sean: you hit the nail on the head with your comment about “context”. I use Twitter to track certain topics (which is how I found this article, from @amandachapel), and I find Twitter useful for finding communities. But it’s rather like graffiti. So not much real information, but lots of speed and timeliness (e.g., the Iran elections, Mumbai attacks, airplane landing in the Hudson).
Best Wishes,
Scott Charles
PlumbBob Research
Scott, thanks — the speed and timeliness arguments probably rule the day. There are other places to get context and details, but my concern is that pulling these elements apart in our ADHD world will lead to less depth, less understanding and less-informed being a citizen’s watchcry.
Sean: I suppose we need to define what you mean by “PR” and what you mean by “good” before we can really answer the question about Twitter. I tend to agree with your conclusions because I believe that “good PR” (combined definition) is public discourse that contributes to the public’s ability to deliberate on important issues or questions (from whether or not to buy a company’s stock to what sort of healthcare reform is best). I believe Twitter erodes rather than enables meaningful deliberation, at least unless it is used to direct people to more substantive forms of discourse (e.g., “Watch 2nites NewsHour on PBS”). Without something else connected to it, Twitter merely contributes to and extends a worrisome trend in our public sphere toward the sound bite and the zinger, often shrill, dismissive, and derisive in style.
There is no denying that Twitter it is increasingly powerful and does have positive uses, but those tend to fall more in the realm of coordinating collective activity than enabling or influencing the deliberative process in the way I just described. Whether you are coordinating opposition protests in the aftermath of the recent Iranian presidential elections or trying to make sure your friends know to meet you at the bar on 5th Street instead of the pub on Main, Twitter seems to be pretty effective.
Jeff Dafler