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Archive for April, 2009

What Matt Bai Doesn’t Get About Twitter

Published by William Beutler on April 26, 2009 in Hotline, New Media Strategies, Twitter, Virginia Politics and William Beutler. 5 Comments

Matt Bai, whose book The Argument offered invaluable reporting and insight about the rise of progressive online activism this decade, has a skeptical take on Twitter in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine. Following a tenuous comparison to ex-Sen. Bob Graham’s infamous, meticulous journaling and a swipe at Sen. Claire McCaskill’s “chatty” tweeting habits, Bai concludes:

If Twitter doesn’t turn out to be just the latest political fad (like, say, psychographic polling, or Ron Paul), then it just may be the worst thing to happen to politics and its attending media since a couple of geniuses at CNN dreamed up “Crossfire” back in the 1980s. It’s not that Twitter doesn’t have a value to society. Its ability to spread news (as in the emergency landing of a plane in the Hudson River) or to circumvent repression (as in Moldovan youths organizing protests) has already proved transformative. But not every new mode of communication lends itself to politics, where speed and complexity rarely coexist. The capital might be a better place if it became a Twitter-free zone, a city where people spent more time talking to the guy serving the coffee and less time informing the world that the coffee had, in fact, been served.

This is in the right ballpark, but it’s still a foul ball. For one thing, as I’ve explained before, the Moldovan protests were not principally organized on Twitter, yet Bai’s mention here indicates it is likely to become a popular media myth for some time to come.

And though Blog P.I. has been recently accused of engaging in Twitter triumphalism, I’ve also made the point that Twitter is best as a way to create and communicate the existence of connections between messages and ideas rather than to communicate complete thoughts — “more medium than message,” as I’ve put it.

It’s not that Twitter does not “lend itself to politics”; it’s that Twitter does not lend itself to explanations of concepts or, typically, careful debate about such issues. Bai notes that Twitter is good for its ability to spread news, but this hyperconnectivity has as many implications as there are kinds of information that can be tweeted.

Here I must clarify my statement that Twitter is not ideal for debate, because I have seen it work. Not quite a year ago, Personal Democracy Forum co-sponsored a Twitter debate between representatives from the Obama and McCain campaigns (including my future NMS colleague Liz Mair). And sometime last year — I can’t quite seem to locate it — I watched a fascinating debate about gay marriage between Michael Turk and Gregory Cole. Just this past week, Evan McMorris-Santoro at The Hotline conducted a “Twitterview” with ex-DNC chairman/VA governor candidate Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffe’s replies were necessarily curtailed and so not terrifically informative, but there’s something unique about holding this kind of interview in a public setting, where anyone can comment on the discussion, even as it is occurring.

Twitter Search is necessary but not sufficient for presenting the full scope of discussion for readers arriving after the live event. Better tools for organizing and displaying these conversations on blogs are needed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is where the Twitter API is headed next. Already there are editorial services like McMorris-Santoro’s Word on the Tweet and Danny Glover’s Hill Tweet News. Another interesting question is whether 140-character tweets are too short to be made sense of by mostly algorithm-driven aggregators like Gabe Rivera’s Memeorandum (and Techmeme). Hashtags combined with Slashdot-style meta moderation may be key to making such a service realistically work.

The point here is that it can. Bai and others see Twitter’s 140-character limitation without giving consideration to the unlimited possibilities for development of the platform. And here I’ll risk borrowing from one of the hoariest clichés in business and technology to say: you have to think outside the tweet.

Given the choice between “Crossfire” and Twitter, I know which one I’d pick.

N.B. I will say this for Matt Bai: at least he made an honest effort to understand Twitter for what it is, unlike this inane interview/column by (who else but) Maureen Dowd, wherein Twitter’s Biz Stone comes off a thoughtful fellow under MoDo’s faux-withering interrogation. If you subject yourself to reading it, I recommend as antidote Nancy Friedman’s parody, “Ms. Dowd Interviews the Inventor of the Telephone.”

Use it Or I Lose Interest

Published by William Beutler on April 15, 2009 in Blog Consultants, Blogging Officials, Twitter and William Beutler. 6 Comments

Is Sen. Richard Shelby following you on Twitter? He is — or should I say, his staff — started following me about a week ago. They’re following 700+ other accounts, and 500+ are following back.

But here’s why I even bring it up:

richardshelby-twitter

Any plans to tweet, Senator?

I don’t know about you, but I try keeping my follow list limited to those who are saying something interesting, and I prefer not to follow accounts that are saying nothing at all.

Shelby’s name recognition is good enough so far to induce most Twitter users to follow him back, but if he doesn’t pick it up soon, I bet you’ll see people start drifting away.

Just another reminder for the e-campaign folks — if you can’t make proper use of a platform, don’t hop the bandwagon until you can do something with it.

Update 1: As of early evening on April 15, @RichardShelby has come alive, at least a bit.

Update 2: For what it’s worth, as of Friday morning before her much-anticipated Twitter show, Oprah Winfrey has 62,484 followers and growing briskly but has not updated yet either. I find this annoying too, but it sounds like she’ll be getting right on it — and you know, she’s a little more famous than Sen. Shelby.

Update 3: A week later, the three tweets from April 15-16 are still the only ones posted. Fail, cont.

The Right and Left on Twitter, Cont.

Published by William Beutler on April 14, 2009 in Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, Trend Tool, Twitter and William Beutler. 8 Comments

My post from Sunday, Everyone an Instapundit: How the Left Underestimates Twitter, drew a strong reaction both on Twitter and in the comment section. As one might expect in the starkly polarized political blogosphere, reaction was split. I can’t complain that it stimulated so much discussion, but there were some objections I’d like to address. To begin with, this comment by Oliver Willis represents a misunderstanding I did not anticipate, but had better explain better here:

[Y]our overall thesis seems to be that liberals aren’t on Twitter, which is not the case.

That most certainly was not my point. Consider that I’ve written two separate posts about how Barack Obama was, until fairly recently, the most-followed Twitter personality. In fact, the first of those posts openly wondered why then-President-elect Obama’s team had stopped tweeting on election day.

To the contrary, I am quite certain that there are more people on Twitter who casually identify as “liberal” than “conservative,” but they key word here is: “casually.” The difference is that Twitter users who self-identify as being on the Right are making a concerted effort to use Twitter for political ends. People who identify with the Left seem to be using it more for fun. Or as Willis put it in the same comment:

Do conservatives have more of a hashtag culture on twitter? Yeah they do. La-de-freaking-da.

Notwithstanding the power of “la-de-freaking-da” as an argument, not all of Willis’ political allies concur. Although hashtag use on the Left trails its use on the Right, there have been efforts to recreate this culture, albeit without great success. Tweetleft is a website aggregating hashtags associated with progressive causes. But if we use Flaptor’s Twist to compare #tcot and #teaparty vs. #topprog and #rebelleft, this is what we see:

tcot-teapearty-topprog-rebelleft

The red line is #tcot; the blue line is #teaparty. The other two hashtags, among Tweetleft’s most popular, don’t even make a dent. My new Twitter friend Angus Johnston argued to me that the #amazonfail hashtag — used to identify tweets relating to Amazon.com’s recent (apparently unintentional) blacklisting of LGBT titles from sales rankings — was a good example of this. If we compare #tcot vs. #amazonfail over the past 48 hours — red again is #tcot and blue is #amazonfail — it is clear he has a point:

amazonfail-tcot

This demonstrates to me that a “hashtag culture” on the Left could easily outpace what the Right has now, if so organized. But it should not be overestimated, either — #amazonfail went viral and therefore pulled in many more people who may not have thought it a Right vs. Left issue. An overtly partisan or ideological effort — which most certainly describes #tcot — remains to be seen.

NYU’s Jay Rosen offered a PBS MediaShift column by my colleague Simon Owens — who also pointed it out to me — about RNC protesters using Twitter to communicate (spontaneous and not sustained) as well as Twitter Vote Report (not clearly an ideological project).

Meanwhile there are other examples of Twitter being deployed by the Right, and interesting developments therefrom:

Like the blogosphere before it, Twitter is already bringing forth new voices and establishing new power brokers. At a time where the Right is casting about for new ideas and new blood, Twitter might have come along at just the right time. But the question remains: Will they extend their reach before the Left develops a stronger presence?

Everyone an Instapundit: How the Left Underestimates Twitter

Published by William Beutler on April 12, 2009 in Asymmetrical Media, Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Instapundit, Leftosphere vs. Rightosphere, MSM vs. Blogs, Online Campaigns, Social Networking, Tech Blogosphere, Terrorism, Tough Crowd, Twitter, Web 2.0, Web video and William Beutler. 25 Comments

I’ve noticed a trend over the past few weeks, roughly concurrent with the Twitter-reinforced Tea Party movement, which is a tendency on the Left to dismiss Twitter both for its apparent limitations as well as its embrace by the political Right. Not only do I think they are making a mistake, but the explanation in part illuminates why Twitter is becoming ever more important to online communication.

To begin, here’s erstwhile conservative John Cole making the former point:

Here is what I don’t understand about twitter. When blogs came out and started to rise in popularity, lots of folks in the MSM and elsewhere said “Great. Just what we need. The undigested, unedited thoughts of the rabble.” If blogs are the undigested thoughts, tweets are the orts.

Here’s Bloggingheads regular commenter B.J. Keefe, responding to new host Matt Lewis’ point — via my post here — that the Right is succeeding on Twitter:

Is this anything worth bragging about? What does it even mean, that there are more Republicans spewing out sound bites and ill-considered thoughtlets? … [G]iven the choice to “dominate” on Twitter compared to, say, the blogosphere, let alone actually getting people off their couches to go knock on doors, I know which one I’d pick.

Even as Markos Moulitsas has recently taken to Twitter, at least one Daily Kos community member decided to hoax the TCOT list about the contents of the stimulus bill — “$2 million for Shamwows” — and with some success, too. (On the other hand, this guy makes a good point.) And here is Gavin M. from Sadly, No!:

Twitter is that new thing that’s like burping the alphabet. Republicans are big on it because they have nothing to say.

He is being glib (what? impossible) but this is a trend, all right. What’s driving this attitude? We can’t ignore sour grapes — for the first time in a while, the Right is being recognized as doing something online better than the Left. It only makes sense the Left would want to minimize that, both to reassure themselves, discourage the Right and encourage skepticism among outside observers.

twitter-t-logoIt’s absolutely true that, by itself, Twitter is a stunted communication tool. The brevity allows for faster communication, which also means less context and a greater likelihood of jumping to conclusions. Then again, the value of each individual tweet is infinitessimal and easily countered (the so-called “self-correcting blogosphere” in fact wasn’t, but the Twitterverse may be different).

Of course, there is a lot more to Twitter than 140 characters, thanks to its API and developer community. For those who may have not been following it closely, Twitpic lets you share pictures. Power Twitter embeds those photos (and links to YouTube) on the page. Utterli lets you post audio. Services like Bit.ly make it easy to track clicks on links you post. Both Farhad Manjoo and David Weinberger have recently explained how Twitter users have compensated for its limitations.

Twitter’s homepage famously asks “What are you doing?” but, famously as well I think, the vast majority of Twitter users ignore this question and say whatever they think needs to be said. Twitter is what you make of it.

·      ·      ·

Because the Left has seized higher ground on the wider blogosphere, the Right has turned its focus to Twitter, and Rob Neppell’s TCOT has helped them organize things like the aforementioned Tea Parties. Of course, this is why the Right went to the blogosphere eight years ago: they perceived the mainstream media as being controlled by the Left. There is obviously a pattern here, and it owes to the Right often considering itself in an oppositional role to the prevailing culture. (This is the same reason why the right-wing editorial positions of the tabloid New York Post and tabloid-y Fox News are so compelling: being oppositional is controversial and being controversial is fun.)

Interestingly, the Left turned to blogs in 2004 because they had lost an election and felt the media had turned against them, too. The difference is that the Left did not have a grievance culture already, and so had to create one. They did, and much of the credit for this has to go to Media Matters, whose founder David Brock literally wrote the book on The Republican Noise Machine.

instapundit-logoThe knock from lefty bloggers used to be (and still sometimes is) that conservative blogs didn’t have comment sections, supposedly because they couldn’t abide the awful things left-wing bloggers imagined right-wing commenters would say in such comment sections (even as conservative bloggers were making a cottage industry of cherry-picking the most outlandish comments out of Daily Kos, Democratic Underground and the like). Now with Twitter the complaint seems to be entirely the opposite: It’s all just chatter, there is no message to convey, &c. It’s one giant comment section.

But which is it? Well, it’s kind of both, right? Instapundit’s blog has long resembled a Twitter feed: short blasts of information with a link to longer commentary elsewhere, maybe a point of commentary and sometimes a photo as well. Twitter makes it possible for many more people (if not literally anyone) to be a clearinghouse of information for news and opinion, with Twitter itself nearly being a middleman like Google. The most-followed accounts on TCOT have tens of thousands of followers, and those with far fewer followers can specialize.

Why is this different from the blogosphere? It all has to do with the platform itself. In fact, it has a lot to do with the fact that Twitter is a single platform. Consider trackbacks, which were once supposed to be a way for bloggers to let other bloggers know they had linked to one of their posts. There was never a standard for trackbacks because blogs could be on Blogger, TypePad, WordPress or any other CMS or even be hand-coded, and so they never quite worked. But Twitter’s Replies tab (or as it’s been lately renamed, @USERNAME) works like a charm. Likewise, the column of recent tweets from those you follow provides a sense that others are reading what you write moments after you have said (tweeted) it.

Let me be clear: I do not mean that Twitter will grant everyone who signs up an Instapundit-like following. What I do mean is that by streamlining communication, Twitter significantly lowers the barriers to moving stories the way Glenn Reynolds does. And so few have shut down their blogs entirely; instead they are using Twitter to promote what they write in longer form there. The Twitterverse has not so much replaced the blogosphere as it has brought it closer together.

·      ·      ·

And yet Twitter’s efficacy as a communications medium is being questioned, too.

There’s a story going around lately — see TechCrunch, for example — about Moldova’s “Twitter Revolution.” If you’re not familiar with the situation, a series of anti-government protests in the Eastern European country have been widely perceived — see also CNN, for example — as being largely organized on Twitter.

Interestingly, this is probably not what really happened. The case has been made, persuasively to my mind, that Twitter’s user base in Moldova is too small to have been useful, and that so-ten-minutes-ago Facebook and decidedly unhip LiveJournal likely played a bigger role. It so happens this argument is primarily being made by blogs associated with the Left.

moldova-protestThis is fine insofar as it seems to be a fair point about the case in question. But I suspect it may also also fuel the dismissal of Twitter on its own terms. Twitter may not have been the tech of choice this time, but that seems to be more about Moldova and less about Twitter. After all, it was already key to early news coverage of the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Imagine if Twitter had been around on July 7, 2005, where mobile phones were used to convey images from the scene. Had Twitter (not to mention Twitpic and Qik and the iPhone) existed then, more images, sounds and even video would have been posted quickly, aiding police and rescue workers.

Just because it wasn’t necessarily Twitter this time does not mean that it won’t be involved next. Of course a Twitter message can be cluttered with @s and hashtags, but the tweet is not always the last word or the end of the line. It’s more medium than message.

The Left should not be so quick to scoff about Twitter. If they laugh it off and fail to develop networks and innovative uses, they will fall behind, appearing relatively disconnected and even slow. Likewise, the Right should not rest on what it has already created, as it did by not continuing to improve its blog-based infrastructure following the 2004 election. If TCOT is the extent of the Right’s innovation on Twitter, they’re toast as well.

Neither Huffington Post nor Twitter are making any money right now, but if I had to choose one, I’d definitely pick the latter.

Photograph of Moldova protest via Cornel Ciobanu/EPA.

ABC News’ Nightline: Under Siege?

Published by William Beutler on April 9, 2009 in Asymmetrical Media, MSM, Seriously, Television, Twitter and William Beutler. 3 Comments

Late yesterday afternoon — following news that crew members of the U.S. ship seized by Somali pirates had retaken the vessel — friend of Blog P.I. Josh Treviño tweeted the following:

trevino-seagal-twitter

Twenty minutes later, Treviño received a call from a producer at ABC News’ Nightline, asking for his source. As he put it in an e-mail yesterday evening:

The answer? Steven Seagal’s 1992 classic, “Under Siege.”

There is only one word in all of the English language which can sufficiently capture the essence of the intriguing though vaguely farcical nature of the mainstream media’s close observation of relatively well-known, if frequently land-locked, blogosphere and Web 2.0 media figures such as occurred in this particular case of a scoop-hungry television news producer tracking down someone with little probablility of special knowledge regarding said then-ongoing crisis, save a propensity to blog or tweet opinions about international relations involving mostly-unrelated countries: FAIL.

Update: Treviño just keeps breaking news:

Getting word that the Maersk Alabama affair is a ruse: the captain is actually trying to defect. Developing ….

Digg Needs to Stop Living in the Past

Published by William Beutler on April 5, 2009 in Midterms '10, Seriously, Social Networking, Virginia Politics, Web 2.0, White House '12 and William Beutler. Closed

I know that Barack Obama and Ron Paul were very popular on Digg during the last electoral cycle, but the thing about that, you know… it was the last cycle:

digg-2008-elections

And what’s this, just one story in the category right now? C’mon, Digg. You can do better than this.

And I don’t care where you go with it — 2012 presidential election? 2010 congressional midterms? 2009 New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial campaigns? — but you’ve got to start living in the now.

When Online Advertising Tanks, What Happens to the Blogosphere?

Published by William Beutler on April 4, 2009 in Advertising, Daily Kos, Google, Metapost, New Media Strategies, Twitter and William Beutler. Closed

My NMS colleague Simon Owens’ latest PBS MediaShift column takes on the state of online political advertising in the “double whammy” for bloggers and ad brokers in an off-year for politics that happens to be occurring in the middle of a recession. Here he talks to Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads and a friend of Blog P.I.:

“Everyone looks at the numbers and says, ‘Wow, advertising is growing 20 percent a year online,’ and they get really excited about that,” he said. “But most of that growth is cost-per-click — it’s Google, it’s AdWords, it’s AdSense. So display advertising stopped growing a year ago, and the problem is the number of impressions online doubles roughly every year, and so you have this gigantic overhang of supply, and demand has not only stopped growing anyway but is also definitely down in a commercial sense. Put it all together and it’s kind of a perfect storm.”

I asked him whether the Democratic administration and the billions of dollars in increased government spending were providing any new markets for ad buys. He wouldn’t discuss the specifics but confirmed that they were seeing some strong pockets of interests in affected industries and interest groups.

The closing of Pajamas Media, Copeland said, was definitely good for Blogads. When the conservative network launched, it managed to swipe several major conservative bloggers, leaving only a handful of the larger ones behind. Copeland told me that, starting in April, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin will be returning to Blogads.

Indeed michellemalkin.com is back from Pajamas Media. Of two display slots on her site, one ad is running in the $450/week slot, though the $1,500 premium slot remains unfilled. However, this pattern could be seen long before the recession hit, and it’s always been my suspicion that the premium account is meant to sticker-shock buyers into believing the lower slot a bargain, while making the occasional big score from a flush-with-cash advertiser buying out the category.

I digress.

The Malkin-owned Hot Air however is not coming back to Blogads, not yet if at all. That site is running Google display ads as well as ads from Intermarkets, which handles Drudge Report and a few other political sites with less-Niagaran traffic.

Also quoted in Owens’ column is Chris Bowers of Open Left, who also goes through Blogads. Here’s what ad column on his site looked like on Friday:

openleft-blogads

I say that because as of Saturday afternoon, they’ve thrown a display ad that wasn’t in there before. Those displays can’t be bringing in a great deal of money. I’ll bet more than anything they’re running just to keep up the appearance of healthy advertising, and hopefully lure other advertisers into the column.

dailykos-blogadsMeanwhile back on Bowers’ former site, MyDD, Jerome Armstrong is keeping the lights on with Google ads, Jane Hamsher’s CommonSense Media and something I’ve never heard of called Pulse 360 that nonetheless has an impressive network. Its Blogads slot remains on the site, unfilled. Two years ago, that would have been unthinkable. At Daily Kos, long one of Blogads’ top earners, Markos Moulitsas has had a diversified pool of ads for some time; today premium Blogads slot is unfilled, one flash-based display ad occupies the (almost-identically placed) lower slot, and just one traditional Blogad (JPG/GIF + a few lines of text) is running (pictured at right). That’s Markos Moulitsas’ latest book, as if you needed me to tell you that. I presume that Daily Kos today is earning significantly less than its election-season peak.

What about Blog P.I.? I haven’t sold a Blogads slot in months, but then again, I almost never do. My traffic may be better than Michael “Heckuva Job” Brownie’s, but I consistently rank near or at the bottom of the Political Insiders Advertising Network. What can I say? I write for a very niche audience when I have the time and inspiration. That’s no way to build an audience, and consequently no way to build an advertising base.

I wonder if this slowdown and possible leveling-off of blogging as a business could bring back some of the amateurism of the blogosphere — a tradition Blog P.I. upholds proudly, if occasionally, at least until someone is willing to pay me to do this (though I am grateful to NMS for hosting this site). Until that time, I’d like to see an ascendance of long-form blogging from experts. More analysis, less attitude. More Ed Feltens and fewer Duncan Blacks.

This is an especially good time for it, as back-and-forth discussions and quick-hit commentary is already moving to Twitter. Of course we’ll need someone to pick out the best stuff, like Memeorandum but with an eye for quality. Just as Silicon Alley Insider suggested yesterday, a curator’s approach to content could be where editing as a profession is going.

Of course, for that you need money too, and money will be scarce over the coming year, which is why I think we will see less blogging for dollars and more blogging for ideas. It will be painful for many, and already has if you consider Gawker’s contraction. But it might be a worthwhile thinning of the herd. And there will be plenty of time to blog for dollars when the Dow is back over 10,000.