Naturally, upon discovering the hoax that was his life, Truman rebels, attempting to break free of his constructed confines. Like any reasonable person, Truman Burbank did not desire to have the world know every time he was using the toilet or making love to his wife.
But that was over 10 years ago. The days of privacy are long gone, and in their place are Social Networking behemoths — Facebook, MySpace, and now Twitter — all of which allow users to freely and willingly do the very things that Truman Burbank fights against in the “The Truman Show.” It’s Web 2.0, man, the age of information sharing, of communication, of collaboration.
It’s also the age of digital narcissism — or at least that’s what writer Andrew Keen wrote in his 2007 book “Cult of the Amateur.” See, for those of Keen’s ilk, the social networks are nothing but bastions of drivel marked by countless people talking without listening and communicating without really saying anything.
Enter Twitter, the media’s most recent Web 2.0 darling. Founded in 2006, Twitter is the brainchild of Jack Dorsey, who, along with the rest of the Twitter crew, prides Twitter on its ability to let you know what your friends are doing exactly when they are doing it.
These updates come in the form of tweets, short 140-character-long messages. While Dorsey drew the character limit from a similar one imposed on text messages, Twitter differs from text-messaging in one central way — followers. Followers are Twitter users who follow your updates, similar to Facebook friends with the main exception that following someone on Twitter does not obligate them to follow you in return.
Twitter, as a result, prizes simplicity over complexity, quantity over quanlity. There is a reason why it is called a “micro-blogging platform” — it’s all about the minuteness of communication, the flood of thoughts, the collective response to “What are you doing now?”
That, of course, produces quite a number of interesting responses, many of which justify the common criticism of Twitter as a rather large waste of time. And, to be sure, many tweets are just that — things that could have gone better unsaid. The real rub with Twitter is that it is hard to justify much of what users tweet, and answering the question, “does anyone care?” rarely results in a positive response. It’s mind-casting at its finest.
And yet, in spite of all of all these things, Twitter has still somehow captured the hearts, minds and keystrokes of 6 million unique visitors each month. It’s also captured Facebook’s attention, prompting the company to attempt to buy Twitter in 2008. The move failed, but, in response, Facebook last month attempted to out-twit Twitter by revamping the Facebook homepage. The move, which, as expected, drew much criticism from the entirety of the Facebook user base, resulted in a finished product suspiciously resembling the Twitter home page (“What’s on your mind?” Facebook now asks).
While Facebook’s flattery of Twitter made for some humorous discussion (“I think the new design sucks!” many a disgruntled Facebook user smashed into their keyboards), what made the redesign more interesting was how futile the whole deal was.
It’s fairly simple: Facebook and Twitter are two entirely different networks. While Facebook functions by connecting you with people you know (or had some random, drunken hook-up with), Twitter connects you with people you don’t. Al Gore uses Twitter. So does President Barack Obama. Like porn? The Guardian counts at least nine porn stars that use Twitter, most notably — and this is all conjecture, I assure you — Belladonna, Jenna Haze and Sasha Grey.
While there are just as many fake accounts as there are real ones, the vast majority of connections made via Twitter are fruitful. Following the aforementioned Andrew Keen, for instance, invariably results in the discovery of some curious article that the author shared with his audience. While marketers see a lot of untapped potential in Twitter, the most compelling use of the service is following the feeds of the academics and personalities who share your interests. Being able to network, or at least benefit from the thoughts of, folks like Tim O’Reilly or the New York Times’ David Pogue is a far cry from just reading their work or browsing their blogs.
And that’s where much of Twitter’s appeal derives from. It was never really ever about telling your friends what you had for lunch, nor was it ever really about telling people what you are doing. It’s all about the networking, connecting with people, and having conversations.
And making money. Let’s not forget about that.