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Some have speculated that every media innovation is just the recycling of an old concept. For instance, is Twitter just an old school chat room on steroids? So, has it all been done already?
I think you can not consider Twitter as something old as new again, unless you allow for the enhancements. Twitter in particular has allowed the online community to interact outside of a computer screen via mobile. As many people as there are that are using Twitter, the reality is that the majority are doing so in a mobile environment. This reality allows for a more immediate reaction and ultimately interaction with those involved.
Bandwidth considerations, mobility, and usage all suggest that the old is not necessarily being recycled but is being accepted. Last, users are finding the ability to connect and feel less isolated in thought. The challenge is to the corporations who see this, but are used to communicating one way and one way only.
Kelly Samardak from Shortstack Photography,
July 21, 2009 at 10:28 a.m.
Just because something is outside of the computer screen doesn't make it "new". Texting is off the computer screen. I was using AIM mobile before Twitter (but I love Twitter more :) and Twitter isn't even "instant" communication. In fact, everyone has such different notification/update settings we can't really point to "one" Twitter. But Twitter aside (because I do love it, and I'm being that person I hate - the devil's advocate) ... what I think Alex B is asking (using Twitter as an example) is...
.... has it already been done? If not, what's next? Is it about the technology that we serve the messages through? Maybe we should just spit shine some half baked stuff.
Me, I'm keeping my money on the good writing, the good stories, the real news being delivered by skilled people through multiple channels with quality interaction - because I still don't think we're there yet, but we're already putting the scooper before the horse. And the horse is really stressed out.
Richard Metzger from Dangerous Minds.net,
July 21, 2009 at 11:03 a.m.
Hello Alex, I'll be watching this space. Great to see you posting in a forum like this. I'm sure your insights will be fascinating.
Reuben, good thoughts here on how people who are on Twitter tend to use it on the go. It's one of the things that differentiates it from personal blogs or even Facebook. I enjoy Twitter due to the "drama" of the fast replies, myself.
Kelly, well put.
I had an interesting experience with launching a new blog last week. I co-owned a publishing and DVD distribution company for many years, so I'm no stranger to unusual marketing. Most years I participated in around twenty product launches, including theatrical film releases. But this example solely used Twitter and Facebook and we were watching the cause and effect relationship so closely that this is what I can report:
http://www.dangerousminds.net launched on Tuesday of last week (so seven days ago as I write this). It was announced over Twitter and FB and within an hour we had over 1000 new readers. My FB friends number approx 1200 and Twitter the same. Many people re-posted the FB item. A few RT'd on Twitter. So 2400 people *potentially* seeing the announcement led to around 1000 actually deciding to check the blog out.
So then a couple of links to the site appeared on Boing Boing and there was a huge spike in traffic. By day 1's end 35,000 people had checked Dangerous Minds out. The second day's traffic was about the same, 35,000, then after the BB link pushed down on their homepage, traffic dropped off from that source. But since then, what we are finding is that every time we do a new post on the blog and then post on FB and Twitter, still about 1000 people visit the site. If we did seven blog posts, then on that day, we got around 7000 people reading the site (as happened Sunday) but when we post fourteen things (like yesterday) then 14,000 visited.
I know this is merely anecdotal, but the consistent posting of things on FB and Twitter to approx 2400 people has led, in our case, to 1000 visits to the new blog each time. With 100,000 Twitter followers or FB "friends" the results could be spectacular. Twelve months ago, I doubt that Twitter or even FB would have been this useful, but critical mass has by now, surely been reached in both places.
Martin Sponticcia from Martin Sponticcia Music,
July 22, 2009 at 7:39 p.m.
What I find different about Twitter is that you can ease into a conversation really well by following people you find interesting and learning about the topics they find worth sharing. So by the time you get into a conversation you already feel focused and connected. Re-tweeting posts or adding your comments to re-tweets gives you a variety of ways to interact directly as well as indirectly. There is no forced conversation and the constant flow of topics makes it worthwhile to stay tuned.
Let's be careful to ascribe too much invention to Twitter. It is not the inventor of microblogging, it is just the next evolution of it. Facebook's status update may in fact be the first microblog. Who knows? Either way, they are both symptoms of a larger trend.
Geoff Caplan from Geoff-Caplan.Com,
July 23, 2009 at 9:18 a.m.
I couldn't agree more with Alex's article.This has been on my mind for a long time now. I hate the word "expert." I have been involved with online marketing for 15 years now and it's fluid, dynamic and always changing. No one is really an expert. Experienced? Yes. Skilled? Yes. Knowledgeable? Yes. Expert? No.
Experts don't call themselves experts. I think an expert is somebody that knows more about something than everyone else. A master. The top 1%.
These "experts" need to get over themselves. I think it's far better to say "I know a lot about this stuff so far, but I'm still learning everyday" than to say you're an expert. Saying your an expert says, "I know everything there is to know about this." That's just stupid.
Of course, people who hire those "experts" are experts at buying into BS.
Jef Loeb from Brainchild Creative,
July 24, 2009 at 12:07 p.m.
Like the proverbial gored ox, the question of whether creativity is a commodity really comes down to issues that include who's doing the commoditizing and how they are going about it. Stage a creative contest with only elite competitors, a Crispin, Goodby, Wieden and the like, and, brilliance becomes expected. Fold that into a market gone mad over procurement approaches to service acquisition – which, by design, devalues intangibles – and the outlook shifts even further toward gray and gloom. Now add insult to injury in the form of crowd-sourced ideas in the context of a total buyers’ market and you’d have to conclude the answer to Mr. Bogusky’s closing question, as long as you limit the question to narrowly defined creativity can only be 100%. On the other hand, this is nothing new – savvy clients have always looked for other clues in choosing between what they perceive to be equal, ergo commodity, aspects of agency performance. That’s why the best in our business have always paid so much attention to getting attention for their work, its results and, you bet, the awards it earns.
I think you can not consider Twitter as something old as new again, unless you allow for the enhancements. Twitter in particular has allowed the online community to interact outside of a computer screen via mobile. As many people as there are that are using Twitter, the reality is that the majority are doing so in a mobile environment. This reality allows for a more immediate reaction and ultimately interaction with those involved.
Bandwidth considerations, mobility, and usage all suggest that the old is not necessarily being recycled but is being accepted. Last, users are finding the ability to connect and feel less isolated in thought. The challenge is to the corporations who see this, but are used to communicating one way and one way only.
Just because something is outside of the computer screen doesn't make it "new". Texting is off the computer screen. I was using AIM mobile before Twitter (but I love Twitter more :) and Twitter isn't even "instant" communication. In fact, everyone has such different notification/update settings we can't really point to "one" Twitter. But Twitter aside (because I do love it, and I'm being that person I hate - the devil's advocate) ... what I think Alex B is asking (using Twitter as an example) is...
.... has it already been done? If not, what's next? Is it about the technology that we serve the messages through? Maybe we should just spit shine some half baked stuff.
Me, I'm keeping my money on the good writing, the good stories, the real news being delivered by skilled people through multiple channels with quality interaction - because I still don't think we're there yet, but we're already putting the scooper before the horse. And the horse is really stressed out.
Hello Alex, I'll be watching this space. Great to see you posting in a forum like this. I'm sure your insights will be fascinating.
Reuben, good thoughts here on how people who are on Twitter tend to use it on the go. It's one of the things that differentiates it from personal blogs or even Facebook. I enjoy Twitter due to the "drama" of the fast replies, myself.
Kelly, well put.
I had an interesting experience with launching a new blog last week. I co-owned a publishing and DVD distribution company for many years, so I'm no stranger to unusual marketing. Most years I participated in around twenty product launches, including theatrical film releases. But this example solely used Twitter and Facebook and we were watching the cause and effect relationship so closely that this is what I can report:
http://www.dangerousminds.net launched on Tuesday of last week (so seven days ago as I write this). It was announced over Twitter and FB and within an hour we had over 1000 new readers. My FB friends number approx 1200 and Twitter the same. Many people re-posted the FB item. A few RT'd on Twitter. So 2400 people *potentially* seeing the announcement led to around 1000 actually deciding to check the blog out.
So then a couple of links to the site appeared on Boing Boing and there was a huge spike in traffic. By day 1's end 35,000 people had checked Dangerous Minds out. The second day's traffic was about the same, 35,000, then after the BB link pushed down on their homepage, traffic dropped off from that source. But since then, what we are finding is that every time we do a new post on the blog and then post on FB and Twitter, still about 1000 people visit the site. If we did seven blog posts, then on that day, we got around 7000 people reading the site (as happened Sunday) but when we post fourteen things (like yesterday) then 14,000 visited.
I know this is merely anecdotal, but the consistent posting of things on FB and Twitter to approx 2400 people has led, in our case, to 1000 visits to the new blog each time. With 100,000 Twitter followers or FB "friends" the results could be spectacular. Twelve months ago, I doubt that Twitter or even FB would have been this useful, but critical mass has by now, surely been reached in both places.
What I find different about Twitter is that you can ease into a conversation really well by following people you find interesting and learning about the topics they find worth sharing. So by the time you get into a conversation you already feel focused and connected. Re-tweeting posts or adding your comments to re-tweets gives you a variety of ways to interact directly as well as indirectly. There is no forced conversation and the constant flow of topics makes it worthwhile to stay tuned.
Let's be careful to ascribe too much invention to Twitter. It is not the inventor of microblogging, it is just the next evolution of it. Facebook's status update may in fact be the first microblog. Who knows? Either way, they are both symptoms of a larger trend.
I couldn't agree more with Alex's article.This has been on my mind for a long time now. I hate the word "expert." I have been involved with online marketing for 15 years now and it's fluid, dynamic and always changing. No one is really an expert. Experienced? Yes. Skilled? Yes. Knowledgeable? Yes. Expert? No.
Experts don't call themselves experts. I think an expert is somebody that knows more about something than everyone else. A master. The top 1%.
These "experts" need to get over themselves. I think it's far better to say "I know a lot about this stuff so far, but I'm still learning everyday" than to say you're an expert. Saying your an expert says, "I know everything there is to know about this." That's just stupid.
Of course, people who hire those "experts" are experts at buying into BS.
Like the proverbial gored ox, the question of whether creativity is a commodity really comes down to issues that include who's doing the commoditizing and how they are going about it. Stage a creative contest with only elite competitors, a Crispin, Goodby, Wieden and the like, and, brilliance becomes expected. Fold that into a market gone mad over procurement approaches to service acquisition – which, by design, devalues intangibles – and the outlook shifts even further toward gray and gloom. Now add insult to injury in the form of crowd-sourced ideas in the context of a total buyers’ market and you’d have to conclude the answer to Mr. Bogusky’s closing question, as long as you limit the question to narrowly defined creativity can only be 100%. On the other hand, this is nothing new – savvy clients have always looked for other clues in choosing between what they perceive to be equal, ergo commodity, aspects of agency performance. That’s why the best in our business have always paid so much attention to getting attention for their work, its results and, you bet, the awards it earns.