Everyone's got a blog now. People, from famous to not, are creating Facebook pages, though there are those few stubborn holdouts who cling to their MySpace pages. And now there's Twitter, and even the most hardened reporters are jumping on board; Philip Hersh of the Chicago Tribune is tweeting, even though he admits it will mostly consist of links to other stuff.
Of course, there's the recently reported stat that Twitter loses more than half its devotees each month, though there are theories that the number is inaccurate because of the way the data is collected (it may not be fully accounting for phone usage). But that's a bit off-topic.
I have no idea how the internal workings of our newspapers are grinding these days, but I would guess that Hersh didn't wake up the other day and say to himself, "I feel the need to tweet." I believe that it is much more like my speculation in my March post, The future of journalism, in which I mused that there would be ever greater pressure on news reporters to turn out endless streams of copy for platforms of all types, whether they be print or a blog or Twitter or so forth.
So my question is, what will be the threshold of acceptance for a platform to be added to the list? If someone comes out tomorrow with Twitter+, a site that requires one to write messages of 141-280 characters, how will organizations know when they should jump on that bandwagon? After all, we know that the most popular blogs are overrepresented by the writers who started up around 2003. Facebook probably seemed more useful before everyone had a page. And I have to think that new Twitterers are likely to be lost in the noise. So there's likely to be quicker movement to the next big thing, even if it turns out to be not so big.
I'd expect a lot of time to be wasted as people and organizations chase the future, and I wonder just how evanescent our information is likely to become.
Of course, there's the recently reported stat that Twitter loses more than half its devotees each month, though there are theories that the number is inaccurate because of the way the data is collected (it may not be fully accounting for phone usage). But that's a bit off-topic.
I have no idea how the internal workings of our newspapers are grinding these days, but I would guess that Hersh didn't wake up the other day and say to himself, "I feel the need to tweet." I believe that it is much more like my speculation in my March post, The future of journalism, in which I mused that there would be ever greater pressure on news reporters to turn out endless streams of copy for platforms of all types, whether they be print or a blog or Twitter or so forth.
So my question is, what will be the threshold of acceptance for a platform to be added to the list? If someone comes out tomorrow with Twitter+, a site that requires one to write messages of 141-280 characters, how will organizations know when they should jump on that bandwagon? After all, we know that the most popular blogs are overrepresented by the writers who started up around 2003. Facebook probably seemed more useful before everyone had a page. And I have to think that new Twitterers are likely to be lost in the noise. So there's likely to be quicker movement to the next big thing, even if it turns out to be not so big.
I'd expect a lot of time to be wasted as people and organizations chase the future, and I wonder just how evanescent our information is likely to become.
3 comments:
Androcass, Carrie's Nation has been deleted from blogspot. I read it last week, and didn't see any sign that she would be closing her blog, checked back today, and it's gone. Have you heard anything from her?
M:
No I haven't, apparently none of the usual suspects has. You can read a not-very-illuminating discussion here:
http://tootruthy.blogspot.com/2009/04/red-alert-citizen-carrie-gone-missing_28.html
Andro, I truly wish there was luminous news to shed light on the complete details surrounding the disappearance and current whereabouts of CC.
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