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.
It’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.
The 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.
This 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.
The left do not like Twitter because they cannot infiltrate, subvert and overwhelm.
With comment sections they can ridicule and harass anyone with a well-reasoned viewpoint that counteracts what they are see as the correct way of thinking. But with Twitter, you only generally hear what people you follow have to say and consume counter-arguments in a secondary mode (searching for @replies). Thus any reply on Twitter is naturally secondary to the original point being made, whereas on traditional comment sections enough noise can easily overwhelm an original point or even poster with enough effort.
With Twitter people only hear what you have to say if you are interesting enough to listen to, which is counter to traditional left anti-conservatives approach of mobbing until people give up. You really can’t mob on twitter.
If you’d like to see how Twitter is being used to organize a grassroots (bipartisan) political movement, go here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=cpsia
CPSIA is a law that sets pre-emptive testing standards for children’s toys, and it wouldn’t have been that controversial if it had stopped at that. Instead, the law sets an unattainable standard making it impossible to legally manufacture many items from motorbikes to ballpoint pens, and it also affects schools, libraries, and adaptive items for the disabled. It has caused over $4 billion in losses and counting. The anti-CPSIA movement is being organized on Twitter and has attracted a wide variety of people who on any other political issue would fight like cats and dogs in a sack.
What Twitter does for the anti-CPSIA movement is provide a virtual chat room. By using a “hashtag” (a sequence of characters beginning with #) anyone can create their own little room. It is like talking at a big party; people can overhear your conversation and come join it. Yeah, there are a lot of people talking about meaningless stuff, but if you wander over to the right corner you can find something very, very interesting to talk about. (By the way, if you happen to see a tweet by @curiouswork, that’s me. I’m one of CPSIA’s top tweeters.)
I really don’t understand why people think Twitter is a limiting medium. I find it no more limiting than ordinary conversation. In an exchange of remarks, do you break out into five-minute monologues, or do you go back and forth saying a couple sentences at a time?
Twitter is like a big party. You can use a “hashtag” (a sequence of characters beginning with the pound sign) to mark off a virtual corner of the party for a conversation about a particular topic. Yeah, most of the people at the party are talking about quotidian crap, but those who are interested in a more momentous topic will find each other easily.
If you’d like to see how this can be used to organize a political grassroots movement on Twitter, search using the hashtag #CPSIA. And if you see a tweet by @curiouswork, that’s me. I’m one of the top tweeters on the subject of CPSIA!
Great post Bill. Worth summarizing in 140 characters? :)
What if somebody like Insta-pundit were to draw attention to a blogger’s Twitter feed, causing many people to swamp the blog and Twitter stats? Fortunately, I have created the word for that — Twitter-lanche.
You gotta admit, it’s got a nice ring to it.
“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.”
I think you mean that in Right/Left reverse?
Almost every sentence in this blog entry is followed by one that contradicts it. I know you wrote the headline to linkbait, and that worked, but your overall thesis seems to be that liberals aren’t on Twitter, which is not the case. Do conservatives have more of a hashtag culture on twitter? Yeah they do. La-de-freaking-da. Cons were on the web long before the left was, but they have mostly failed because the people leading them have been the same-old Republican political consultants vs. regular people. Who are some of the top conservative Twitterers? Patrick Ruffini, Soren Dayton, Saul Anuzis… also known as… Republican consultants.
Conservative talk radio won because it is a grassroots channel for the con base. Cons won’t succeed online if the best they can keep mustering is more Republican consultants playing around. (Which is fine with me, but I’m a liberal :)
Great post, I like it and I found it useful where did you stated….
Oliver Willis is a man of the people, if by “people” we mean the billionaire international currency trader George Soros, the man who pays Willis’ salary as a 24/7 political hack employee of Media Matters for America.
Other than that, Willis is jus’ plain folks.
I get paid 24/7? Who knew. And we apparently have time travel as well since that means I was being paid for my blog back in 2000 before Media Matters even existed! We’re diabolical.
@ Oliver Willis: Who is Soren Dayton? I recognize the names Patrick Ruffini and Saul Anuzis from Twitter, but I can’t tell you what they have tweeted about lately, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t recommended either in a Follow Friday tweet.
I don’t know who are these “same-old Republican political consultants” you are talking about, but I know that I am not paying much attention to them. However, I am following a lot of ordinary people who are concerned about the state of this country. But you are correct in that conservatives’ success online will be in harnessing the grassroots-enabling power of the Internet, much as Barack Obama did in the presidential campaign.
John Cole’s thoughts are digested, alright. What you see are the final, flushworthy results.
Speaking of digestion: Hi, Oliver!
Dayton was a McCain aide and GOP consultant/operative, etc.
Hi Jim, don’t forget to send another cowardly email to Glenn Reynolds!
I really did hurt your feelings, didn’t I? And, much like all those Meatlover’s Specials, you’ve been carrying it around with you all this time. I’m glad to have made a difference in someone’s life.
Hurt my feelings? Maybe if “hurt feelings” means pointing at someone too cowardly to talk to your face and hides behind unfunny third grade jokes. As I told you before, conservative humor doesn’t have to suck as badly as the stuff you write.
Of course I haven’t hurt your feelings, honey.
Roy Edroso, who is a good judge of these things, once said that Jim Treacher was funny.
The evidence is not strong.
Wingnut crap.
Could one of you conservative communications geniuses stretch that out to 140 chars and send it out as a tweet for me? Thanks loads.
Thanks for the mention, William. My response is here.