As I trawled through the weekend newspapers in the search for anything other than recession doom and gloom, the debate on bankers’ bonuses or frivolous Valentines reunion stories, it became evident that in almost every newspaper or publication I read, there was at least one story on Twitter. Intrigued by the apparent fascination this weekend about the service, I couldn’t help but obsess over wanting to read more to find out whether I was missing something.
I was stunned to read in the FT that Twitter rejected a takeover by Facebook valued at up to $500m, even though there is no revenue generation model from the service… Now correct me if I am wrong, but it seems almost obscene to place so much value on something that has failed to introduce ways to make money from it yet.
I then went on to discover The Twitterati (OMG – there’s a name for so-called elite users) column in the Sunday Times Style magazine. I was horrified to read that someone had actually broadcast the birth of a child to the whole world using Twitter!
And then came the endorsement from India Knight (Sunday Times columnist) that she is retracting her initial thoughts about the service – “saying it was needy and megalomaniacal and plain weird for any sane person to spend the day posting random thoughts onto a public site”, to now class it as “amazing”. Amazing because of 3 things -
1. finding out people are funny
2. apparently it can be a great resource and
3. you feel connected
Embarrassed by the fact that I work in a Digital Agency and I had not experienced the Twitter phenomenon (and also having soaked up all this recent information), I immediately signed up to Twitter and selected a few friends to follow. Having broadcast my first thought “Crofty00 just sold her soul to the devil and signed up to Twitter” it was swiftly responded to by my ex-housemate – “you’ll be bored of it in 10 mins! :)”. How right he was… has the world slowly become obsessed with what everyone else is doing every moment of the day? At what point will we make the realisation that focusing on our own lives may provide a real benefit, rather than preoccupying our interest with others?
I don’t really see any personal benefit in Twitter, I don’t want to know when my mate “is listening to the weird bubbly sound of earwax dissolving inside his ear” or “totally lost for words and feels drained”. Can that sort of thing not be discussed in the pub, or are we now evolving into a world where the majority of our social communication is done solely through the realms of the virtual world…. known as Twitter. And will there be any real financial benefits in the future?
