March of the twits
Okay – I’ve succumbed to the inexplicable Twitter frenzy that everyone seems to be afflicted by of late, and will be tweeting away at the Put People First G20 march and rally in London this weekend. It could actually be fun to see how well a crowd of activists are able to report live from a big event like this.
My jury’s out for the moment – willing to be convinced. Twitter, and the apps that surround it such as Twitpic, have such feeble instructions and inductions for members that you’d think they want to keep themselves only to the geeks (actually, they probably do). It will be hard work convincing activists to sign up – though of course there will be loads now who joined anyway out of fashion and now have no idea what to do with their accounts (’difficult third tweet’ syndrome) and might like to try this.
Hands up though. I really don’t get Twitter in its UK context (ie phone upload only, no txt alerts). It runs on immediacy or intimacy, and most people don’t have enough of either to be worthwhile to others. I certainly don’t.
I can see how if you’re willing to put in a bit of time, it can be a fantastic way to speed up and deepen networking and collaboration for defined groups of professionals (background awareness helps a lot in professional networking). But for every mover or shaker tweeting useful content, there are a dozen other potential gurus just telling your about their breakfast. You look through lists of users thinking, “now there’s someone I’d really like to understand better”, only to find the understanding they’re offering is about their cat or the footy.
Sure, if you’re LAFD, and can tweet news on which building in the high-tech district of town happens to be burning down at the moment, that’s immediacy. Otherwise you’re in danger of clouding more useful conversations, as seems to have happened at SXSW this year – just too much Twitter.
So this mass-Twittering at the weekend might be interesting – Is it another use of the microblogging medium to encourage a better shared experience, or just a fun one-off gimmick for activists to play with? Will the G20 be bowled over if #G20rally makes it up the hashtag charts? Watch what happens (and add your own tweets) at www.putpeoplefirst.org.uk/twitterbuzz
Tags: G20, london summit, march, put people first, twitter
March 27th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
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