briansolis - Latest Comments in Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Viktor Ovurmind — Tue, 18 May 2010 10:46:52 -0000

There must be a law of diminishing returns as to our ability to maintain a web of relationships. The Dunbar number is interesting http://www.lifewithalacrity... because it seems to be a reasonable assumption.

[v.o.M.]

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Viktor Ovurmind — Tue, 18 May 2010 08:34:05 -0000

IMHO Technologists are very rational about building irrational things for the sake of rational results that produce irrational consequence. Tim seems to comprehends this http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6108578.stm just as McLuhan once did: http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/Archives/Mc...

[v.o.M.]

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

briansolis — Tue, 18 May 2010 08:27:55 -0000

In the ear of the beholder...interesting.

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Viktor Ovurmind — Tue, 18 May 2010 08:18:22 -0000

Interactive technology is an extension of self. If that self is owned by a marketer or a personal brander it is broadcast, if it is fed by a social person it is conversation. I treat it as observation because that extends data as a "Third Ear". The value of platforms are in the ear of the beholder whether we listen or we are told.

[v.o.M.]

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

TimWalker — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:04:51 -0000

Very interesting stuff, Brian. Here are a couple of thoughts, though:

1. It's possible that Twitter's usage patterns are skewed in relation to other social media sites because of usability issues. Twitter makes it (a) easy to sign up for an account, but (b) hard for many people to grasp how to use the service fruitfully. If those observations are correct, it would be natural to have lots of rapid defectors and little-used accounts.

2. Other comparisons of uptake and usage patterns across media might be useful. E.g. I'll bet it would be interesting to compare the usage power curves of Twitter and cell phones. Everybody, it seems, has a cell phone, but usage of them differs widely.

3. Even without points 1 and 2, it strikes me as a false dichotomy to say that our choices are "conversation" or "broadcast." Plenty of folks on Twitter use it in each of these veins, and even highly conversational folks like myself *also* use it to send and receive broadcast messages at some times.

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Консалтинг в Китае — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:48:11 -0000

Great review, really!
But I also might say that this is a bit one-handed, like, twitter really do can be neither conversation nor broadcast platform in some ways, depending on the sole purpose whatsoever.

Like, for example, the latest story about Trent Reznor's twitter escapade, what would you say about that?

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

hhotelconsult — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:29:20 -0000

10% of twitter users generate 90% of the content, says a study the BBC picked up. This ties in fairly well here for you... cheers!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/...

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

redhat — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:38:31 -0000

Twitter is a broadcast medium, 1 to N. Any subscription systems is effectively a broadcast medium. It's more like cable than terrestrial, which gets its money by way of the adverts which intersperse the broadcast. This is why in my opinion one of two business models would be most effective to exploit Twitter:
1. Pay-per-View
2. Subscription

Obviously neither is truly viable. A third option, which is more like PBS - would not be as effective - is business/private use. In this model a business would pay, and a private person would not.

Just some General Musings. ;)

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

billbennettnz — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:13:49 -0000

I'm finding there's increasingly less conversation on Twitter than broadcast messages. And it's definitely getting worse.

The trouble with the Twitter signal to noise ratio is the difficulty of filtering out the dross.

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Debra — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:05:50 -0000

In regards to the Conversation Prism included in this post - First of all, great content. Secondly, maybe its me, but your visual depiction is bugging me a little. It's not a prism... possibly a spectrum, although your use of color does not seem to indicate likeness or difference along a scale as one might expect in a spectrum analogy. Can you elaborate?

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

John Guppy — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:11:54 -0000

In the right environment Twitter is absolutely both. I often describe Twitter as a "BroadCon" Channel to my clients (sports teams).

Sports teams have a wealth of valuable content and Twitter enables broadcasting of quick insights that fans find valuable and entertaining. Pre-Twitter this type of content would never see the light of day, since it would not justify drafting a press release, posting to a blog, or capturing on video. If you have truly engaging content - then Twitter is a very valuable and legitimate broadcast channel.

Twitter, of course, offers much more than a traditional broadcast channel in the fact that it is also a conversation platform. This is great for sports teams to talk to and listen to fans. Sports teams that just throw Twitter over to their PR departments to use solely as another broadcast platform are missing the point.

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Dave Fleet — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:52:57 -0000

Great post - and a fascinating analogy of top Twitter users to the editors on Wikipedia.

This leaves me with the question actually posed in your title - is Twitter a conversation, or is it becoming a broadcast tool for the top users, with the silent majority just consuming (or leaving)?

Part of the beauty of the tool is that you can make it what you want it to be - if you just want to communicate with your friends, then you can. If you want to connect with companies, you can. If you want to learn from those in your industry then (depending on the industry) you can.

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Rita — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:39:06 -0000

Brian, thanks for providing more 'food for thought'. Interestingly, I'd just been wondering about how 'conversational' Twitter actually is. While I do believe it 'can easily be both' as anonymous said, I do think that right now it's more 'broadcast' than 'conversation' platform.

I'm new to Twitter - a month or so new - and avoided it for over a year because I just didn't get the value. I was still wondering how anyone could be so ego-centric as to think that their every move was of interest to anyone. LOL!

Since joining Twitter, I have found it be an incredibly useful tool. I'm a voracious information hound and am passionate about learning. The folks I follow provoke thought, provide great information and resources, connect me to some very interesting, knowledgeable and thoughtful people, blogs and websites and not least of all, are entertaining.

And while I have engaged in conversations, I was surprised by how much more 'broadcast' than 'conversation' it is. Could this also be a reflection of my 'Titter-age' and therefore also a reflection of the how young (in Twitter years) the majority of people on Twitter are? ...sort of like infants who need to learn to communicate/speak before they can engage in a conversation. The conversation happens only after much observation, listening and a whole lot of babbling ;-).

On a separate but related note, the other thing that I've wondered about is whether our conversations are limited geographically. Are we North Americans following and conversing beyond our borders? If not, Twitter again would be more similar to the broadcast model where most of us (at least in Canada and the U.S.) watch television and listen to radio programming and news that originates from our own respective countries of origin. If so, and I'm guessing that it is, what a missed opportunity to widen the discourse.

Brian, thanks again for the post and for sparking the conversation.

Rita Ferrari

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Teri Schindler — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:34:56 -0000

Nice post. I side with the broadcast platform argument - at least right now - partly because of the functionality of the site.

But, as Berners-Lee says (and who am I to argue?), we don't fully understand the web anymore:
http://www.newscientist.com...

Perhaps it's in an evolutionary stage that favors broadcast for the moment.

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Bob — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:12:15 -0000

I have to agree with the anonymous comment. I think Twitter -- like all of these tools -- can and is both simultaneously.

One of the things I love about social media is that tools become useful because of what the USERS do with 'em.

It's up to twitterers to decide what the medium becomes - that could be anything from a flash-in-the-pan (Second Life?) to a daily essential (RSS, Facebook).

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:58:59 -0000

Twitter can easily be both at the same time. Www.Twitter.com/The_Pub_Deb... is designed to both inform (brodcast) and engage people in thought provoking debate.

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

guruvan — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:44:49 -0000

I have to agree with Mark above. "Twitter is used most successfully as a broadcast medium"

I find it much more useful to broadcast thoughts, ideas, links, links to comments, and announcements (of blog posts etc) than to try to engage in conversation on Twitter.

Twitter works ok for quick exchanges, quick answers to requests for information, and even a little "chitter-chatter". But does it lend itself to the extended conversations that I find elsewhere? Not at all. I much prefer FriendFeed for that, and Facebook provides a sort of a happy in-between the two.

This will all become much more obvious as the Google Wave (and the related products based on their source code) come into public usage. As we see Twitter be primarily relegated to link broadcasting, and low-tech mobile usage.

Unfortunately for Twitter, their insistence on not using their service as a company, not innovating, and not paying attention to the ways that people use their product will finally come around and bite them in the end. As I've said many times, they should have sold when the offers were on the table, because they're likely to lose by having waited for their $1billion mark. It's even more unfortunate given all of this that @biz & @ev continue to think that they'll be running the company still in 5 years. That seems a sure sign of stagnation to have the original founders running the company when they aren't superstars like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and the like. And successful as they may be, they're no superstars.

To it's credit, Twitter has brought us firmly into a new realm and era of realtime communications. One that shows us the importance of companies (brands) participating in the conversations. Alas, it doesn't offer the medium for them to really do so effectively. Broadcasting is not "brand management" and it's certainly not following the trend toward non-interruptive marketing, and consumer lead marketing. It has show companies the need for those tools though. And it has shown us how fast news can "go viral" and the consequences (good and bad) of it doing so. Twitter, however lacks the ability for a company to put substance behind it's rebuttal to and "twitstorm" that may brew after a public gaff (like the #amazonfail debacle)

It really will take the "next new shiny object" to bring us into the era of true conversations of the multitudes with the multitudes; conversations that allow companies to actually engage with their customers in public.

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Mervyn Alamgir — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:42:45 -0000

Brian, thanks for the stats and analysis of Twitter as a communication app. I could see Twitter at one time being used more for conversation, probably up until mid/late 2008. Much of what helped Twitter succeed was also an implicit trust between the friend and follower. I would guess that the friend/follower ratio was much closer to 1:1 than it is today.

The addition of celebrities, media and spammers has revealed Twitter to be more of a pseudo-megaphone. Recent attempts at using Twitter for phishing scams have eaten away at the trust aspect. There is also a pressure for brands to show ROI through involvement in Twitter. All of these aspects have pushed the conversation aspect of twitter to be a much smaller percentage of its overall use (my assumption).

Blogs have been a better forum for conversation for me, although not 'real-time' like Twitter but containing much more thoughtful expression than you can capture in 140 characters. Twitter has been great at getting recommendations for new blog posts to read, like this one, and talking real-time about experiences.

Twitter will continue to be used for both conversation and broadcasting, but it will be interesting to see how much of Twitter's product roadmap is geared towards enabling one versus the other.

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:08:28 -0000

You spent alot of time on this and it certainly shows.

Thanks for all the input and clarity and charts. Annette Aaron

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Regina — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 17:39:50 -0000

I think Twitter serves many functions and, basically, it depends on who is using it. Some people or organizations are all about using it to blast information. It seems that right now, that's what people are doing with it. However, there are other uses too.

I blog. I'm on other social networks. I'm finally back in the States after living years abroad, so I'm using all the forms of social networking to help me find work and networking is key to that.

I use Twitter to listen to what others are saying, but I also send out a fair number of tweets. I retweet if I think information is interesting and useful. I've had people turn me on to job search sites and give me tips. I'm following companies that I'm interested in working for. However, I also have frequent conversations with people I know too.

I think some of it is gender, but a lot of it is comfort. I've been on the net for years. I'm really comfortable with the Internet and Web 2.0. I think as more people learn and get comfortable these numbers will shift. However, there will always be a group of people who are more comfortable lurking and just watching.

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Rachel Kay — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 17:37:58 -0000

Great compilation of statistics here. I understand the best we can do is to compare adoptions rates to those of other social networks like Linkedin and Facebook but it’s important to remember it isn’t apples to apples. Facebook serves primarily as a place to interact with old classmates, “real life” friends and family. Twitter seems to link people with common careers objectives and interests who don’t necessarily know each other in the real world. Just like at a bar, it’s much easier to hang out and chat with people you already know. It takes a little more time to identify commonalities and engage in discussion with people you haven’t met yet. Maybe once people start to mingle a little more there will be more significant participation and growth. In addition, it appears that the most prolific users have some vested interest in communication, social media, marketing or some business/brand function etc… Perhaps it stays as a happy hour for those people rather than opening up as wide as a MySpace or Facebook?

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Melissa DelGaudio — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 17:01:17 -0000

Hiya Brian! Great post, as always; lots of food for thought here. But, as @contrapuntist said above, regardless of what the statistics say, Twitter (or Facebook, or any other application, for that matter) is what WE make of it. Sure, there are plenty of people out there who are just dipping their toes in the water, and that's just fine. There are plenty of people, though, who ARE listening and who ARE actively joining in the conversation.

In my world, Twitter is many things. It's a tool for following voices I respect and from which I can learn. It's for garnering information to which I might not have had access or of which I was unaware. It's a way to engender a reputation of my own. AND it's an always constant source of amusement. I read, I listen, I reply -- sometimes -- retweet that which seems of value, work to help my own clientele ... and I enjoy myself in the process.

I don't think it can -- or should -- be labeled as one thing or the other.

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Beata Wickbom — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:51:18 -0000

Hi Brian!
Beata the moderator from Stockholm here. I agree with Linda Ziskind and @contrapuntist, do you have to define the format of microblogging as of June 2009? Why would that be necessary? If we had defined eg Flickr as a personal online photo management tool, and only that, and given instructions to users, we wouldn't see all the communities of interest that flourish within Flickr. Nor would we think of it as a travel planner, the way Flickr Places has evolved.

One more question regarding conversations. I think blogs are great for conversations, but do you think that we should have commented on this article on Twitter as well? I don't see how that would add extra value? If we could extend the conversation to Twitter, what aspects do you believe would benefit from the larger audience of Twitter?

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

adrian chan — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:44:50 -0000

Brian,

It might be a good time for some of us to define "conversation!" Or, if not to produce a strict definition, to at least establish some degrees of conversation.

I've seen it described as "agreement," "consensus," or an "exchange." These capture the exchange of ideas, information, or claims made in the act of talking.

Some describe it in terms of a situation involving interaction. Conversation being a performance and engagement, collaborative and non-conflictual: regardless of what's being talked about.

And some i think mean to describe an interactive improvement over broadcast media: conversation is two-way messaging, flat, open, democratic, etc...

Newcomers of course may have preconceptions of what conversational tools are for, only to be disappointed by the fact that two-way messaging, or talking in 140 characters, or racing after followers (etc) can be decidedly non-conversational! So are there new kinds of conversation, unique to the tools and how they're used, worth defining? So as to better set expectations, guide and suggest uses and approaches, and measure results?

Might be worth a stab.

Re: Is Twitter a Conversation or Broadcast Platform?

Robert B. Vellani — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:33:16 -0000

Thanks for the very useful insight. I re-posted at on my Twitter and FB. Kids are the missing link in the analysis. MySpace and Facebook are image and foto driven. They are more fun for less verbal/scribal kids. Twitter is more idea and information driven. Kids Im via phone, not on twitter. The three sites have some key difference.