pandemic growth of/on twitter
Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself – to not take the opportunity to badly mix a metaphor with the “pig + bird” mashup would just be out of character!
The hot news of late has been along two intersecting themes – the staggering (dare we say) viral growth of Twitter, and the impact of this exploding conversation machine on the popular news topic of Swine Flu.
bring da noize
However you measure participation, the Q1 growth evidence of Twitter usage is demonstrating a projectile that places it alongside many of the most successful media growth stories of the past decade. Joe Lazerus did an interesting compilation of growth in Twitter as measured by daily posting volumes, which appears to be approaching 5 million daily. Active usage analysis like this is far more interesting to me than the pile-on statistics of signed up users.
when swines fly
The level of buzz of Swine Flu on Twitter is staggering. It’s starting to drive worrymongering among those who analyze media, as noted by this highly circulated article “Twitter’s Power to Misinform“, and as reported as a concerning phenomenon on CNN. Remember when Twitter was lauded for being the ultimate efficient platform for immediate news dispersal? Well, it’s still true, but we’re now evidencing the fact that as the volume of participants rise, so does the noise of the conversation. If you do a simple browse on the #swineflu thread on Twitter, you see a truly human range of commentary ranging from conspiracy theorists to armchair medical advice to smart ass commentary. Twitter is approaching real life, folks, where the vast majority of thoughts people have about something like Swine Flu are just random noise.
noise canceling technology
In one dimension, Twitter is an open commons for publishing thoughts and engaging people in conversations. The concerned analysts who assess these conversations using a “publishing metaphor” are giving individual words too much credit. You have to look at individual posts as having little value in isolation. Quoting them individually, without context, is just as credible and valuable as things overheard on the street.
The interpretation of conversation is a VERY interesting theme of innovation which will advance rapidly in the coming year. Whether it’s via applied ways to monitor buzz as a collective metric, or ways to give authority to Twitterers via analysis of the reaction or participation behavior of other users (RT volumes, follow ratios, etc.), or the soon-to-be-hot world of filter-based applications, the “layer on top of the conversation” is one of the most fascinating spaces to watch in media today.
Ultimately, this holds the promise of converting the world’s fastest growing continual stream of consciousness into the things you really want to hear, from the right people at the right time.
So, yes, bring on da noize!
