In the interest of disclosure, I tweet. A lot. Go ahead, click HERE and check me on it.
Believe it or not, I’ve actual been using twitter a lot less here than I normally do in the States because I don’t have the ability to sent tweets from my really cheap cell phone.
The attitude towards twitter in the UK is very similar to the US. There are people who get it, people who don’t get it and don’t want to get it, and then the people who don’t get it but if shown the ropes could potentially get it. I’ve found that most people are in the latter two.
The UK does have some famous folks online: Stephen Fry, 10 Downing Street (the Prime Minister’s office) had one before the White House did, and some other performers and such. But it seems like their tweets are much more in the public eye than an Ashton Kutcher tweet might be in the States. I can’t quite figure out why.
Over the weekend, Stephen Fry’s twitter feed made it into a New York Times article (and subsequent tweet) because one person had called him boring and he threw what amounts to a minor hissyfit. In his defense, Fry has a history of being depressed and possibly bipolar. He basically said he, the most followed British man on twitter basically, was going to quit the tweeting game altogether.
There was an uproar, with people hurling insults at the poor guy who mentioned Fry’s sometimes boringness. Eventually Fry and the guy made up and everything went back to normal, but this is a story that made it into the New York Times. What does that say about our internet culture?
Twitter does have real world news applications, but I’m concerned that gossip hounds at news outlets are muddying the waters between what matters and what plain doesn’t. And because of this, I can see why some people would never want anything to do with such a media platform.
In the end, I don’t think twitter is going anywhere, which means the media needs to adjust to that and come up with better standards for what constitutes a story in the digital age.
Comments
Leave a Reply
Comments that do not abide by our Comments Policy may be deleted.