 Die! Twitter! Die! Die! Die! Twitter Twaddle amps to record level last week – is the end near?
Over three years ago Tom Foremski fomented social media revolution with his seminal post Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die! - confirming and articulating a mass perception and setting many of us on a mission to find the next stage of public relations. Blogs, RSS, widgets, video – we could get information, entertainment and news straight to constituents and ‘relate’ to the ‘new’ media in a much more efficient manner through a myriad of free distribution channels.  A blog post can be a press release, Brian Solis said. He was/is right. Then came Twitter. Annoying, invasive, addictive, self-destructive Twitter. I didn’t think Twitter would last – then I didn’t think Barack Obama could win the election.
The obscene pervasiveness and inevitable flame-out of Twitter should be evident. What is not is how Twitter corrodes our communication. There are now two kinds of Twitterers: 1) inane 2) self-promotional. I am in category 2 (at least that’s my self assessment) and follow other self-promoters, whether they are journalists, news oraganizations, shills for products or services, consultants, flacks or flack service providers. My Twitter stream is like a Times Square news zipper with tips and news I can hopefully use. It has some value for time wasted sifting through the dreck.
It is category 1 that frustrates and will be the death of Twitter. Many social media gurus fall into this camp. ‘Just stopped into Starbucks for double soy latte.’ ‘Tied my shoelace and buckled my belt.’ ‘Bought a magazine – wow.’ Most of Twitter falls into the “Too much information” category and the rush to build ’followers’ leads to silly behavior, blatant prostitution (link whores have ceded to Twitter sluts), and obsessive non-sensical Twittering. Twitter is not about communication – it is Ashton Kutcher trying to build his brand and infiltrate as many minds as possible with the least effort.
 Tweetle dee and Tweetle dumb:  The week’s Twitter news roundup
- Maureen Dowd tweets a big one in her NYTimes Opinion piece: To Tweet or Not To TweetÂ
- (Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
- The Tweets of outrageous fortune
- Or to Twitter against a sea of troubles)
- Land Rover Pays for Tweets - Is tweetola the new payola? from Advertising Age
- Which celeb will dominate the Twitosphere? http://tweetrace.com/
- Twitfit! Restaurant reviewer calls in lawyers to claim Twitter identity - NY TimesÂ
- Twittering a recipe is now a twecipe
- Twitter now accepts telepathy - scrambled brain on Twitter, The Escapist
- Oprah pumps Twitter traffic - USA Today
Web Video of the Week / Evil Side of Twitter
The Seattle P-I online edition dropped off the top 30 list of newspaper sites in March, according to Editor & Publisher magazine. There are all sorts of prognostications about why this has happened – they no longer have a print edition to support the online presence – but the reality is that the online P-I is a poor excuse for a news source. Hearst eviscerated the P-I news bureau and essentially turned the seattlepi.com into a bottom feeding web aggregator, not a ‘news’ source. The P-I web edition illustrates the difficulty of grafting a new media venture on to an old media property.
SHORT TAKES: Police Working With PR Firm in Shift Toward More Communication - Washington Post | Evidence and PR spin collide in Vioxx courtroom battle - The Australian | Negative press hurting Kaylee’s family, PR rep says - Jason Wallace and his public relations consultant lashed out at the media yesterday, saying negative publicity has threatened the family’s financial stability, globeandmail.com, Canada |
Online Newsroom Practices to Attract and Satisfy Journalists, Investors and Analysts - Thurs, Apr 30, 1:00 PM EDT, Bulldog Reporter’s PR University, $299 per phone site. Seems relevant. Productive?
