part II — Social Networking: Banality is in the Eye of the Beholder
Jeanne McManus is wondering if she should get more coffee or just slug down the lukewarm sludge at the bottom of her cup.
Jeanne is glad that January is over and now wants February out of here, too.
Jeanne has not updated her profile, her photo, her wardrobe or her hairdo in many, many months.
Stop me. Please. If I can’t stand reading about the banalities of my own daily life, why would anyone else want to? And yet the air is filled with blogging, social-network chitchat and, even worse, Twittering. In bursts of 140 characters or less, armed with nothing more than an electronic device, I can Twitter. I can provide to you, in staccato pulse, a real-time, first-person narration on an incredibly important topic: What I’m Doing Now.
Is it just me or isn’t it a bit presumptuous to think that if I’m scrambling an egg, you’ll want to know about it?
© 2009 The Washington Post Company
(Pinckney, MI)– Vince Kern is hoping Jeanne McManus got some fresh coffee after all and thinking she needs a lesson on Twitter.
It’s a shame that many experienced journalists are reluctant to view and write about using Twitter, Facebook and other soc-net applications as legitimate tools. Instead, they prefer to opine on the banality of 140-character postings and assume colleagues and users in general only use the apps for self-aggrandizing reasons and no one should be interested in what others are doing.
In about 30 minutes or less, McManus and others could learn how to simply search topics on Twitter.com, or master the use of hash tags to follow live news events or conferences from the comfort of their own home.
For me, Twitter and Facebook play two distinct roles in my self-admitted techno-obsessed world. In the media business, the social, journalistic and business communities blur in with communities of friends and relatives and it took me awhile to figure out how to use the tools to serve both.
Here are two different posts from Twitter accounts I “follow’’ yesterday:
• (Live from an exciting think-tank conference in Washington D.C. of digital, newspaper and design experts): “Mobile: Quick show of hands indicates good number in room are willing to pay for mobile apps if the tools/content are relevant. #rev2oh”
• (A twitter Tweet from Sockington the Cat): “HEY FATTY CLEANED OUT THE LITTERBOXES well there’s plenty more where that came from mister”
On background, Sockington is a real cat and his postings — of course — are spoken by his owner attached to a mugshot of the friendly feline. But, get this, over 200,000 people follow Sockington on Twitter, and I can attest that (as a cat owner myself) hearing from him at various times of the day can break up the monotony. Often, it’s just downright hilarity to me.
Similarly, being able to follow the group at http://revenuetwopointzero.com is equally enriching from an educational and networking aspect. By using TwitterDeck yesterday, I was able to set up a window that showed only “tweets’’ from that group and followed along as ideas, comments and visions of the future for my business world were delivered from respected experts right to my fingertips.
And when my good friend Howard Owens shared tweets about rolling from Las Vegas to Bakersfield via Greyhound under the stars on a recent trip home, I felt as if I were right there, too. All from wonderfully-rendered 140-character slots of thought.
For about a year, I’ve been able to scour new sources of web postings by folks reshaping the media industry and have been able to regain a posture of having my feet on the ground instead of feeling too old to “get it.’’
Synonyms for the word banal are not encouraging when looking for counterpoints to McManus regarding the other soc-net application I use, Facebook. But recounting how great it was this winter to reconnect with many friends from college and journalism days gone past and bond with loved ones through a brutal winter, I realize McManus is setting up a straw man.
After all, banality — for all its corny, asinine, clichéd and bromide platitudes — is in the eye of the beholder.
And then there’s the familiar Facebook geared more to the mundane. Does everyone in the Facebook universe care if one Jeanne McManus or Vince Kern is scrambling an egg or (in my case) taking a nap? No, but some might. I certainly love to hear of Facebook friends far away reading to their children, sisters spending an enjoyable day with their husbands and seeing pictures of “us all’’ from our different and far-flung cities.
And what most of the cliché columns on the uselessness of Twitter and Facebook don’t mention is you can control your environment of friends and followers. Rarely do I friend colleagues on Facebook to keep what should be behind the curtain exactly there.
Banal uses of technology, by the way, are nothing new. Recall long conversations on the telephone? The portrayal of that nosey Mayberry operator who connected folks in that town but only after a gossip session? And what about the nattering of banalities on radio, television and other areas of life?
Mike Thompson, award-winning editorial cartoonist for the Detroit Free Press wrote a summary under a cartoon on the banality of Twitter this week titled “Putting the twit in Twitter”.
The litmus test of any new technology is whether or not it improves your life. I have a hard time imagining how knowing that someone just washed his or her cat improves anyone’s life.
Ultimately, it’s the listening to each other about our lives, the support and encouragement we can offer in these difficult times and the love and knowledge we can share through these new applications that is the real application. Engage with verve and real spirit, turn off or avoid that which bores you — it’s still your choice to make.
I predict McManus and Thompson will one day reassess their views of Twitter and one of their first DT welcomes will be from @sockington. Because as we all orbit around the Sun at a constant 18.5 miles per second, sometimes life is simply about washing one’s cat.
(To learn more about Twitter, click here)
Or for an online user’s guide that is easy to understand, go here: http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/
Thanks for the nod.
For me, I enjoy the challenge of twitter on two fronts.
One is to say something of substance in 140 characters … often these are my tweets on media or politics.
And you’ll rarely see me tweet something like, “making a cup of coffee.” Rather, I want to challenge myself to make it something a little more literary in 140 characters. One of my favorite of my own tweets some months ago went something like, “So this is how the morning begins. So this is how the morning begins. Not with a bang, but with a twitter.”
And the people I follow tend toward the same aspirations for their twitter stream. A few people I follow are more like link bloggers (and I do that a bit, too), and that has it’s own value. And once in while, I learn news first on Twitter.
What I absolutely don’t do, nor follow anybody who is is a steady stream of, “now I’m brewing coffee.” Yes, Vinman, even for you I don’t really care to know when you’re brushing your teeth.
But people like Jeanne McManus have never really tried twitter, not to any extent, so their opinions on twitter are more than banal. They are vapid and unworthy the word “journalism.”
Howard Owens
March 22, 2009 at 3:58 pm
“Vapid” is a great word!
On the Money
March 22, 2009 at 4:58 pm
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part II: How Social Networking Kept Me Sane Through Long Winter | Love is Life
March 22, 2009 at 6:16 pm