Welcome to Twitter Club!
microblogging May 6th. 2008, 6:00am
Credit (original image): Silent Disco by Brixton
Grab a nickname, a cool outfit, and BAM! You’re a member of Twitter Club! Or, heck, come as you are and just Twitter with everyone!
You can talk all day long with your pals, share secrets and exciting things, and remind each other how great Twitter is! If everyone else just understood how cool Twitter was, they’d want to join too!
So why don’t more people join? It’s really cool… right?
The club of the 21st century
Setting (most of) my sarcasm aside for a moment, Twitter is like a lot of other clubs, such as:
- the Glee Club
- the Chess Club
- the Drama Club
- the Yearbook Committee
- the Rotary Club
- even some of the less popular sports clubs.
Granted, Twitter is a club that’s close to 1 million members strong, but I’m sure that the Mickey Mouse Club and the Merry Marvel Marching Society had some big numbers in their day, too.
It’s still a stomping ground with limited appeal; you have to like Twittering.
It’s not nuts and bolts, it’s flesh and blood. And words. Lots of words.
Lately bloggers write about the relevance of Twitter, its technical stability, and its potential to ever generate enough revenue to be a viable business. Twitter does have some useful, though limited functionality, and a devoted fan base.
However, if there’s any value to Twitter, it’s in the interactions and relationships between its users and, to a lesser extent, the information that’s stored there.
T-W-I-T-T-E R-C-L-U-B: Twitter Club!
Twitter’s really a big social club.
Picture a gigantic club house, not unlike a gigantic dance club and bar, where you can:
- drown in 500,000 simultaneous conversations
- listen to smaller groups in the “room” or network that you happen to be in
- sneak off into the corner with one friend and whisper short nothings (not necessarily sweet ones) into each other’s ears
Now, add into the mix a series of:
- actors
- salesmen
- fanatics
- politicians
- random buffoons…
and the picture’s complete. It’s Twitter Club!
Not to say that Twitter Club isn’t cool or fun. It’s just that Twitter Club is also like a trendy nightclub where you can sit around and chat, in a limited sense, for free. You can pick up your mobile phone and call someone on the other side of this huge club and chat if you want.
There’s no bar, no real music, and there’s very little room to dance.
People love to hang out there anyway.
Yelling sweet nothings in a noisy room
That’s not to say that you can’t have some meaningful interaction at Twitter Club. It’s just that the odds are stacked against you if you try, much like trying to debate economic theory or existential philosophy in a disco when the mirror ball’s lit up and the music’s pumping away, while hordes of sweaty people try to shake their bodies to a beat.
In the end, a club will make it or close down if the economics aren’t there. However, if people still want to hang out together, twitch to some music, or just soak in the rare kind of vibe, they’ll go to a new club. This is probably what will happen if Twitter Club is forced to close, as long as people still like to hang out in similar clubs.
But why don’t more people come to Twitter Club?
The problem is that not everyone likes the same kind of clubs, the same social situations, and the same diversions. This, in my opinion, is why Twitter might not make it into the mainstream.
Not everyone wants to join a huge club like this.
Twitter Club can be fun, exciting, and rewarding, like many other clubs. However, the value that you extract from Twitter Club is related to the energy you put into Twitter Club.
A lot of people probably won’t like Twitter Club: they aren’t geared towards these kinds of club interactions. It took me awhile to get into it and I’m less fanatical than a lot of members.
But we really want more people to join! How?
On the other hand… maybe it just takes some encouragement and a few friendly faces to get the party started. And isn’t that really what keeps clubs going? Not the locale or the architecture: it’s the people.
Maybe Twitter Club will stay intact and get a killer make-over. Who knows?
But… if your friends go somewhere else, chances are you will, too. It’s all about having fun… with them.
Wherever.
If you're new here, welcome! Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed to stay up to date with my latest posts and articles. Thanks for visiting!
Other posts that you might enjoy reading:
On FriendFeed, this post was liked by 1 person and commented on 0 times hide
May 6th, 2008 at 8:20 am
I think that the importance of listening rather than talking is something that’s really important on Twitter. One of the greatest benefits I’ve found is the ability to follow industry leaders - I guess that’s kinda like eavesdropping on the more interesting conversation on the next table. They may not be interested in what I have to say right now, but I’ll still find some useful info.
Sure I tweet pretty regularly myself, and there’s a second level of Twitters who I regularly interact and communicate with. So I’m both eavesdropping and chatting at the same time.
But I do think the point that it’s effectively a specialised interest - like any social networking site you have to add value to get value, and not everyone is interested in doing that.
Check out Three Great Twitter Sites from Robin Cannon
May 6th, 2008 at 8:39 am
@Robin - you bring up an excellent point: Twitter is an alternate channel to monitor discussions, regardless of whether or not you participate.
In a larger sense, I tend to believe my comments of “Twitter Club” apply to social media in general. People like you and I are the type who probably believe in the social media motto: “if you get it, share it.” A lot of people just don’t have the time or interest to do so. That doesn’t invalidate what we do in social media, but it does suggest that it is a niche interest. We might be better off finding ways to encourage people to be more creative - period - and take whatever else comes our way.
May 6th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Mark, this is a great analogy. And while I think you’re right that it could apply to just about any social network, there’s something special about Twitter that makes it stand apart from the rest. I suppose that’s why it continues to thrive despite the apparent lack of business model.
For me, Twitter became useful when I began to expand the list of people I followed. I realized that there was so much being said that I could learn from or respond to. I quickly realized that Twitter is nothing without a community. Once you reach ‘critical mass’ for your purpose for being there, it really changes the game.
Check out Back to Basics: B2B from Scott Monty
May 6th, 2008 at 10:42 am
@Scott - no doubt the value is in the collection of personalities and information that permeates Twitter.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I think you’re right that your comments apply to social media in general. In fact it’s interesting to note that Digg has become less popular and more criticised by the more active social networkers at the same time as it might be considered to have expanded beyond a niche.
The criticism comes from the fact that in-depth or more intelligent content is getting lost because of the large number of posts of gossip or YouTube videos etc. Yet that’s exactly the kind of thing you’d expect from a more universal social media service. I think the development of niche or targetted social media is really the next major step in its development.
Check out Three Great Twitter Sites from Robin Cannon
May 6th, 2008 at 11:48 am
@Robin - I think that there’s a lot of niche social media out there but, by its very nature, it’s not talked about as much as the more mainstream services.
You mention Digg: I’ve heard the same criticisms about the types of content that are hitting popular status there. Some people blame this shift more on the ever-changing algorithms that Digg uses to control which stories become popular rather than any actual consideration of the value of the submission. But who really knows?
Having said that, though, I’m all for expanding the social media playground so that more people can participate. I think that’s a good thing. We just have to accept whatever else that entails, even if it means that some of our preferred content is buried by other stuff that we might not like. It’s a tradeoff.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Twitter is so *not* a club. Twitter is a human feed with conversation. How much or how little you converse is up to you and your followers.
Also, Twitter = RSS + humans = RTS = Real Twitter Syndication
No humans, no Twitter but no interesting content or conversation, no Twitter. One needs both to truly understand Twitter. And I am now coming to conclusion that Twitter is best way to explain RSS to others who *never* caught on to RSS.
Peace to your day, Mark!
Check out Marketing, advertising and publicity consulation from BarbaraKB
May 6th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
@BarbaraKB - Twitter might not actually be a club, but if you were to look at it from the outside, with its own rules (Twitter etiquette, plus Twitter’s inherent functionality), uniforms (avatars), codenames (Twitter user ID), and fanatical devotion of its mainstream users, wouldn’t it resemble a club?
No, maybe you’re right. It would actually resemble a cult, not a club.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Brian, again, just like an RSS feed, you decide who’s in the stream & how often you read and relate. Perhaps you need to reexamine how you’re using Twitter?
May 7th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
I have to wonder why the sudden resurgence in talking about Twitter lately. I have seen so many postings about it in the last week from really big blogs in the blog food chain. I also have noticed a lot of smaller blogs that I frequent are suddenly interested in Twittering… to me it’s still kind of droll. So why all the sudden interest in Twitter again?
Check out I am in shock, it’s like finding out you’re married to the mob from Michelle Gartner
May 7th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
@Michelle - People are interested in reading about Twitter, methinks.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:50 am
[...] Twitter Club [...]