Solid Analysis on Twitter: Finally

I was a little weary of the media hype about twitter. I was trying to listen to Mike & Mike on ESPN radio this morning (the oily Eric Kuselias was sitting in for Greenberg unfortunately--the man is almost as annoying and arrogant as Colin Cowherd), and Golic was tweeting back and forth with Chad Ochocinco Johnson. No. I'm not making this up. They were reading tweets on the air. Note to ESPN: sports radio is a difficult medium in which to deliver a good product; it's only made more difficult when reading tweets from the completely inarticulate Ochocinco. Yesterday someone was saying on another XM station that Lindsay Lohan tweeted her boobs. I'm being followed on twitter by life coaches and motivational speakers I've never heard of, and even if I have heard of them, who the hell pays a life coach? Talk to your mom or your friend or the guy that hates you the most. Their input will be useful. Companies are trying to spam me on twitter. Celebrities and pseudo-celebrities want me to the follow them. I don't care. I have a network of friends on there, and I follow some journalists and editors I think are worthwhile. I also follow good wine bars here in town as well as good restaurants. I've asked for contacts for stories on twitter and received excellent sources. I like the medium. It's young. It has issues. It can be better. But I like it.

Until this outstanding article from American Journalism Review, I had only read good analysis of twitter that focused on technology or business model. This focuses on demographics, journalism, and ethics. It's solid analysis. It's one of the reasons I subscribe to AJR and CJR. I read enough hyped up bullshit about whatever the next thing is. Twitter may be one of the next things, but you may be surprised what AJR thinks it's going to be useful for and who the primary users will be.

Comments

[Leighton]

I've been avoiding Twitter the way I avoid having a cell phone, but with its involvement in Iran, my boss wants a briefing on Monday. Time to join the 21st century, I guess...

[greg]

I avoided it for a while too, but started using it about four months ago, maybe more. I've found it pretty effective for generating contacts/sources for stories. I need to be a little more ruthless about not following people who tweet "blueberry pancake day" or other such shit, and the ones who tweet every couple minutes because they're bored in class or at work.

[Plano Michael]

Twitter has been a work tool (in the past 6 months) for me too. Like the article mentions, I don't know any teens who use it, but all the twenty and thirty somethings around the office use it for both personal and business reasons.

I see it's long tern use being more like wikipedia than like facebook. There is a "10% of users producing 90% of the content" stat that has been floating around. Those numbers are more like wikipedia users than facebook users. That is how I use it too...a more immediate, real time, braking news, kind of wikipedia.