Traditional Media and Twitter

Had an interesting conversation last week about the news industry and social media specifically about how mainstream media is using Twitter.

At the most basic level, Twitter is a two-way conversation. Follow most people’s Twitter stream and you will see a number of retweets and pieces of conversation back and forth.

That is not how the media is using Twitter and I think it is part of the reason why they are not being successful with social media.

Here are two examples of Twitter accounts:
Stephen Colbert has a twitter account. This account has 303,000 followers, but Colbert only follows 51 people. A look at his Twitter stream shows no RT’s or conversations. You cannot send a Tweet to Colbert and ask him a question about his show from last night. He is on Twitter, but he is not part of the conversation.

CNN is similar. Their Twitter account is http://twitter.com/cnn which has 157,000 followers. CNN follows only 17 people and they are all other CNN twitter accounts. Obviously CNN is not interested in a conversation on Twitter. To them it is simple another way to distribute their headlines, like a ticker tape running across your TV screen

That is not to say that traditional media cannot add value to Twitter. One way the New York Times could have added value to the Twitter conversation during the Iran Election would have been to create a mashup page. This page could have included a running script of twitter posts on the Iranian election, and next to it the NYT could have had a series of articles/commentaries/editorials that gives some context to the twitter stream.

One weakness of Twitter is that it can be a fire hose of information, especially on a fast-moving topic like the Iran election, and what is missing is someone to put some context around all these Tweets.

This strategy would allow mainstream news organizations to be involved in Twitter, but in a way that plays to their strengths, instead of trying to be something that they are not.