Hey,
I'm currently sitting on my couch watching L&O reruns and contemplating why my nose is always plotting against me. For example, this time yesterday, my Droid buzzed me and the email causing that informed me that my classes the next day was cancelled. This made me assume that, since my cold seemed to be almost over, I would have a carefree day where my HW would be easily completed and I might watch some movies or play Reach, enjoy my good fortune to have a Tuesday off. Then I wake up this morning, and it seemed like one of my roommate's favorite rap artists had a tour date in my ear drum, and was distributing the phunk all over the place. Which is to say, I was in massive pain. One trip to the doctor-pharmacy combination and three things of medicine later, here I am, still in pain and full of Pizza Hut after my 5th consecutive sick day. I feel drugged, which is fine, I'm not a complainer, but it's annoying to say the least. Oh well.
On to the topic at hand, my aforementioned homework is preparing for a speech I have to perform tomorrow night for Public Speaking 101. I'm not one for public speaking (Now that I think about it, that was the first line of my first speech for the class) and so the only way I know to prepare for such an endeavor is to write it out beforehand. And why waste all that work when I can use it to update my blog. I was GOING to post the second part of my epic award-ready series Holy Shirt! today or sometime this week (sorry Colbert), but it's been put on hold until I am 100%. So this will have to do. It's a little basic, but it's aimed towards my college classmates, people who think Twitter is just "Today I ate tunafish!" and "I checked into the toilet trololol" With that context in mind, I hope you can enjoy my writing anyway, and I promise more insane idiocy soon.
I'm going to get the reactions right out of the way at the beginning. Today, I'm going to be talking about Twitter. Yes the service that, as far as you can gather, is for nothing but egomaniacs to pretend they have an audience who wants to know what they had for dinner. It's been around long enough that it seems everyone on the internet and every company is just jumping on the bandwagon without a lot of people actually getting what Twitter is. I remember two years ago when I first joined the service, I had the same reaction as many college students. As I grew to love the service, I noticed that when it came up in certain classes, not many of my fellow classmates found it useful at all. That is a shame, as I have come to believe it is the most important communication tool or our generation. It is slowly but surely changing the rulebook for countless companies and industries, and is the true literal definition of power to the people.
But before I get into that, I think I have to spend a minute telling you exactly what Twitter really does. Unlike Facebook and Myspace before it, Twitter is not really a self serving social network. You can comment all day and you wont get much value out of it if no one else interacts with you. The real value of Twitter is that it is a living stream of consciousness for the internet. At any given time you can jump into your Twitter stream and see what your followers think about what is happening in the world at that very moment. Log in on Sunday nights and you'll see a hundred different comments about the latest NFL ruling. Log in during prime time to see if the latest episode of the Office is good enough to catch up on. Log in Saturday morning to see which of the weekend's new releases at the local multiplex is getting the best reviews. Log in during a major event to get commentary from the audience and insight that even five years ago would have been impossible to receive. The best part is that most of these updates are written by people just like you, with no agenda, no ulterior motives, no reason to lie. You can see first hand the voice of the people.
The most recent example of Twitter's power is the recent fiasco regarding the popular clothing store, the Gap. When the Gap unleashed their new logo onto the internet and began the long process of re-branding, they were faced with an immediate and ugly backlash. Twitter was full of people mocking them for how ridiculous the new logo was. A few hours after it was revealed, there was even an entire twitter account pretending to be the new Gap logo and making fun of itself. A few days after that, The Gap saw the negative reaction and but the kibosh on the deal, reverting back to their previous branding. Even ten years ago, it would have taken a year for a company to make a decision, gauge public reaction, and then fix it if the idea was faulty. Think of the New Coke fiasco, which lost the Coke company both money and the hearts and minds of their custormers for months. Nowadays because of powerful tools like Twitter, this kind of change can happen overnight.
As you can see, once you can get past the strange reputation it has, Twitter is an amazing tool that is shaping the way the world works. More and more movies are moving to a Wednesday schedule and avoiding reviewers in order to minimize bad Twitter buzz. More companies are taking advantage of the intimate communication the service provides to give their customers better customer service then any automatic telephone can. Even celebrities and directors are discovering that producing content and then releasing it straight to their fans with instant feedback works as a great alternative to the traditional studio model. I can only imagine what the next ten years will bring as more and more of the world discover the power of real time internet and 140 character messaging.
More soon, sick now
-Pudge
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