Posted on 06/21/2009 7:00:37 PM PDT by Cicero
It was do or die for Twitter last week. To its credit, it didn't die.
Every promising new technology reaches a point in its life cycle when it either grows up and becomes part of the everyday landscape, or it flames out and becomes a footnote to history.
And as history illustrates, it's a process that often repeats itself like clockwork over surprisingly long periods of time. Almost twenty years to the day since student leaders of a massive protest in China's Tiananmen Square used then-novel fax machines to bypass traditional media, organize themselves and share their message with the world, opponents to the disputed election in Iran found themselves using Twitter in much the same way.
Playing a very serious game
In many respects, it's how the game is played in places where free speech isn't enshrined in the constitution (wait, what constitution?) -- and you risk being hauled in, or worse, for simply being out on the street. When massive crowds of ordinary people line up against well-armed, government sanctioned forces, their only saving grace is the power of information. They can't shoot back, of course, but the mobile Internet can outrun even the most powerful weapons. Even before the bullets began to fly in Iran last week, pictures, videos and quick snippets were already getting out to an increasingly distressed world.
It's the technological equivalent of a cat-and-mouse game. Just as the authorities figure out how the supposedly rebellious masses are using a certain set of tools to bypass government-imposed limits on expression, those masses are already moving on to the next technology baseline. Conventional e-mail isn't working? Switch to a Web-based service like Gmail or Hotmail. When they block those, switch to Instant Messaging. Toss in a few proxy servers and IP spoofing services for good measure. And when those inevitably get stomped by the powers that be, pick up your mobile phone and start texting. It's all about staying one step ahead of your adversaries.
Relevance, anyone?
This is all infinitely fascinating if you've got a Molotov cocktail ready by the door, but what does any of this have to do with you and me? Or with conducting business in a decidedly more peaceful part of the world?
More than you might assume. Up until some hinky election results exposed what increasingly looks like rigged voting in a country not historically known for being remotely democratic or free, Twitter was a tool many of us loved to hate. It was unstable, feature-thin, prone to high levels of noise, and often annoying too. Ashton Kutcher punking CNN annoying. Lindsay Lohan shooting topless photos of herself annoying. Worth a laugh at the water cooler, but hardly something the company should be using to raise brand awareness and get closer to stakeholders and improve operational agility.
Everything changed when a bunch of protesters in a distant land stumbled upon Twitter after their usual methods of opening windows for the rest of the world stopped working. Government censors, apparently unaware that cat-and-mouse is as relevant today as it's ever been, did their usual thorough job blocking blogs and other conventional Web-based resources.
So the Internet-savvy commonfolk switched gears and found another way to marshal themselves. And world media did the same when pretty much all of them were kicked out of the country, and have since leaned heavily on Twitter to connect with sources in the country and learn, haltingly, what's going on.
From protest to business
Although it may not seem like it at first blush, what's happening in Iran is very much like Marketing 101 for the social media age. The only difference is the average company is trying to raise awareness and sell stuff. No politics, no bullets, just marketing. The Iranian experience holds major lessons for companies still clinging to the notion that Twitter -- or Facebook, or any other singular social media tool -- isn't worth using at this point in time because it's too trivial for the important business of building business.
They couldn't be more wrong. The stark reality for these companies is they can't afford to be left behind. In many cases, their customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders are already using these tools, too. Organizations that keep their heads in the sand and stay on the sidelines risk being left out of the conversations that ensue because their stakeholders have already moved on. It's like targeting customers on Downtown Main Street long after the malls sucked the streetscape dry...and after big box stores did the same thing to the malls. You can't afford to rely on yesterday's tools or processes.
While the often dizzying pace of evolution of social media tools can make it easy to justify a wait-and-see approach (why invest in something that may not be around in six months, after all?) the costs of using yesterday's tools (fax, anyone?) long after the world has moved are almost always more significant.
The only constant is change
Social media platforms are ephemeral beasts. Industry pioneer Friendster is now an afterthought. MySpace is laying off hundreds of staff as its user base shrinks, and even Google has failed to gain any traction with Orkut. So the risks of using the wrong platform are real. And it's easy to use these failures, and the fast-moving evolution of these platforms, as an excuse to hang back.
But when you're under threat and you're not sure what things will look like tomorrow, you often have no choice. And sometimes you have to make do with flawed, incomplete tools still undergoing rapid change. In that context, the situation in Iran won't magically fix all that ails Twitter. The service still has an ocean's worth of scalability and performance issues to address. It also doesn't seem to have much of a business plan. But Twitter's geopolitical debut does reinforce the value of quickly latching on to emerging tools of communication to pursue a common goal quickly, efficiently and cost effectively. It also reinforces the value of doing so before your competitors do.
Carmi Levy is a Canadian-based independent technology analyst and journalist still trying to live down his past life leading help desks and managing projects for large financial services organizations. He comments extensively in a wide range of media, and works closely with clients to help them leverage technology and social media tools and processes to drive their business.
Hope they protect privacy.
March 24, 2009: Iran mulls death penalty for offensive blogs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq9SkwGxvYY&feature=fvst
Can someone explain twitter to me? I just don’t get it.
How is it different then sending a bulk email to all your friends and family?
How is it different than simply reading a “live” FR thread?
Thanks in advance.
That’s great!
You’d have to ask my kids that. I’m not up to speed yet.
Jeff Head may be able to answer your question.
Think of it as IM on steroids.
It is, isn’t it? Saw a glmpse of it on a video...
I think it’s this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMJ48Oe3nRw
Ham Radio during the WWII era comes to mind
Might be of interest.
Yes, absolutely. I hadn’t thought of that, but now I recall many a spy story about that time.
i finally signed up on it the other night. thought it looked lame. then i started finding people to ‘follow’. some were in Iran, others here (like Jeff Head), you can sign up for FR, CNN, most news sites, and then there are people like Karl Rove. you just ‘follow’ them and when they send a message it comes to your home page. i just keep it open all day now and check it off and on to see what is going on all over the place! lol hope that helps a little? it was interesting the last few days/nights reading the tweets out of Iran by the way.
Ping.
I’ve been commenting on other threads that this Iran crisis may give us some idea of what might replace the MSM if it dies.
Then where would we get our news, in order to dissect and discuss it as we do here in FR?
Maybe YouTube. Maybe Twitter. Maybe the internet in general, with individuals providing photos, videos, and eyewitness accounts, and some mechanism that will help sort it all out and bring the best stuff up to the top.
It’s too early to say. But if the MSM wants to commit suicide, then I think alternatives WILL appear to take its place.
Twitter is a free "micro-blogging" service that let's you post short 140 character "tweets" including a message or link. Your tweets are visible to people who have chosen to follow your posts and are generally also searchable by anyone. You can reply to a tweet by writing @Username. It's similar to Facebook status updates except more public. In fact I set up my own tweets to cross-post to Facebook. You are correct that it's basically the same thing people have always done, just very streamlined and trackable. Of couse the simplicity/ease of posting from your cell phone means people can do it practically any time, anywhere. The searchability makes it easy to graph trends and see how a particular event is unfolding in real time. For instance you can find other people who are standing in line for the same movie across the world or hiding under a desk in Tehran. Twitter has really caught on in the media/pr world or basically anybody who has a message they want to get out.
Thanks for the link. Very interesting. I think it is clear that the present regime in Iran is illegitimate. And this is the regime that Obama wants to work with as a friend. He comes across as a complete idiot.
http://twitter.com/ConNewsutm_source=follow&utm_campaign=twitter20080331162631&utm_medium=email
Also people who want to make it easier to group tweets together will include a “hash tag” in their tweet such as #iranelection. For instance we could start making tweets ending with #FRtweets and move this whole thread to Twitter. Lots of people use it to post inane stuff like “just ate some French fries but it really shines when it comes getting first hand info and feedback on breaking events.
Thanks. I may get my kids to help me sign up and figure it out. Most of them are using Facebook, but Twitter seems to be entering the picture.
Also, Deo gratias, last year I was able to cancel my AOL account, because none of them use AIM any more—the only reason I kept paying the monthly charge as long as I did.
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