Media and Twitter

16th May, 2010

Ever since my last post about Twitter and its overuse/misuse as a defacto public address system http://track2media.blogspot.com/2010/04/we-twitter.html, dated 22nd April, I have been flooded with extreme reactions. While some of the followers and friends from the online community agree that its use as a public address system by people in public life, like Lalit Modi and Shashi Tharoor will undermine the sanctity of democratic institutions, there is another set of people who have vehemently condemned the view point. “Don’t blame the medium for human follies,” is the argument in general. Actually one of the friends from the online community wrote a blog post on the issue with the same title and started a discussion thread on the Linkedin.
The series of arguments and counter-arguments had gone unnoticed had I not sensed a profile fixation in the thought process on the subject. While those who supported the theory of twitter role being confined to sharing and expressing professional info belonged to various professions, most of the die-hard tweet community was from media and communications. It seems to be a revolution of sorts in a country where the advent of computers in the mid ‘90s led to a number of journalists getting axed out of the system since they could not adapt to the new technology.
Coming back to the core issue of Twitter being overused/misused, do media and communication professionals give the devil more than its due? I have already analysed on this blog last year, July 17, as to how over reliance on social media only reflects strategic communication dilemma http://track2media.blogspot.com/2009/07/over-reliance-on-social-media-reflects.html. It seems the uncensored nature of the medium is something that is driving the new breed of media and communication professionals crazy for the medium.
The industry facts and ground realities are actually hilarious, to say the least. Last year the PR head of an Agency was replaced by a less experienced, and arguably less competent, person on the merit of his tweet knowledge. The management may have been awed by his tall claims of changing the way they used to function through the use of new age technologies, like Twitter. The tech savvy professional who tweets more often than even some of the celebrities promised to work on the expectation management of the clients as well and shift focus from the traditional media coverage. That appeared too fancy and tempting to an Agency that had been at the receiving end of clients for poor media coverage and lack of quality exposure. However, the clients were not amused by the tweet head of the Agency and his shelf life could not be more than a year.
Another practitioner of Brand Strategy and Management was recently caught off guard in a presentation where he emphasised the need for the use of new age communicational tools like the Twitter. What this smart operator had failed to realise was that the corporate house had their own internal team for the purpose of online reputation management. When they did a google check on his credentials, before inviting him for the formal presentation, they found out that he had a healthy follower list of five.
Some of the PR professionals are regularly into the habit of tweeting before every press conference. However, I have often noticed that none of their followers are actually the beat reporters for whom it has been tweeted. That points to the core issue as to whether Twitter is to express or to impress. For the new breed of media and communication professionals it seems to be a tool to impress. They are probably compensating for the failure of their previous generation to adapt to the new age technology with computer. And that is something I find quite funny. Isn’t?