June 4th, 2009
Time says Twitter will change our lives; I Tweeted that I puked
Twitter may be doomed. Time put Twitter on the cover and dished out thousands of words of fluff about it.
This Twitter love-fest is getting out of hand. Can the Time jinx be worse than the Sports Illustrated one? Why am I getting flashbacks about that Transmeta cover Red Herring did back in the day? You know the one where Transmeta was going to change everything. You’re probably asking who the hell Transmeta was? My point exactly.
The more you’re in this industry the more you realize that you may be stuck in a rerun.
Twitter HQ should be nervous—very nervous. Like “it’s over” nervous. Like “the Tweet bubble is over” nervous. Like “holy crap I need a revenue plan in 27 days” nervous. Like “how is Time going to get younger users on Twitter” nervous (Time’s demo is the polar opposite of young).
And I’m not exaggerating. The Time story is that bad. Ashton was the first hint that Armageddon was near. Now Time seals the deal. Time tells us Twitter will change our lives! Really. It will.
Nevermind that the Time author does little to illustrate how Twitter will change our lives. Great, we talk in 140 characters. We’re using it to communicate in new ways. Sounds like the phone, instant messaging and text messaging. Humans always find new ways to communicate.
Here’s Stephen Johnson of Time’s argument:
I think there is something even more profound in what has happened to Twitter over the past two years, something that says more about the culture that has embraced and expanded Twitter at such extraordinary speed. Yes, the breakfast-status updates turned out to be more interesting than we thought. But the key development with Twitter is how we’ve jury-rigged the system to do things that its creators never dreamed of.
In short, the most fascinating thing about Twitter is not what it’s doing to us. It’s what we’re doing to it.
And then there are a few examples of Twitter in search and at an education reform powwow.
Then Time discovers APIs:
One of the most telling facts about the Twitter platform is that the vast majority of its users interact with the service via software created by third parties. There are dozens of iPhone and BlackBerry applications — all created by enterprising amateur coders or small start-ups — that let you manage Twitter feeds. There are services that help you upload photos and link to them from your tweets, and programs that map other Twitizens who are near you geographically. Ironically, the tools you’re offered if you visit Twitter.com have changed very little in the past two years. But there’s an entire Home Depot of Twitter tools available everywhere else.
Wow! That must be like curing cancer.
And then the conclusion (users innovate!):
We are living through the worst economic crisis in generations, with apocalyptic headlines threatening the end of capitalism as we know it, and yet in the middle of this chaos, the engineers at Twitter headquarters are scrambling to keep the servers up, application developers are releasing their latest builds, and ordinary users are figuring out all the ingenious ways to put these tools to use. There’s a kind of resilience here that is worth savoring. The weather reports keep announcing that the sky is falling, but here we are — millions of us — sitting around trying to invent new ways to talk to one another.
You should thank me. I waded through that story so you don’t have to. Wake me up when there’s a technology that teaches us how to read minds without talking. Now that’s innovation—and worthy of a cover of a magazine no one reads anymore. In the meantime, I’m going to hurl.
Maybe I’ll Tweet about it.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Smart Planet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 06/04/09
