Monday, July 30, 2012

The list: How do people use Twitter

How do people use Twitter?



I am looking for bedrock: the essential building blocks of interaction and meaning.



If you boil the way people produce and consume content using Twitter down to basic common denominators, what do you have?



How Twitter is used:



Output: what people are doing when they Tweet



1. PROMOTION-self or product
a) branding;
b) driving eyeballs

2. DISTRIBUTION MECHANISM
a) for own writing/photos/media
b) for that of other: the "water cooler with magazine clips" (Stephanie Butler)

3. VALUE-ADDED COMMENT
4. CONVERSATION
a) private yet public dialogue
b) multiple contributers to single thread

5. INFORMATION
Breaking news or straight facts: can be 2b but also original

6. REPORTAGE
a) The use of Twitter to report and disseminate news is seen as starting with Janis Krum's Tweet & Twitpix January 15, 2009, when a plane landed in the Hudson River. 
Followed by: Steve Paikin writing inverted pyramid stories on Twiiter during G20 in Toronto, June 2010; NPR's Andy Carvin's curation of Arab Spring Tweets starting Dec. 2010-Jan. 2011; Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Jan. 2011; Brian Stelter on NYT weather (Joplin, MO, May 2011); London riots that fall; many news events since. 
b) Also Shawn Micallef's flaneur observations

c) To write what Poynter's Roy Peter Clark, in January, 2011, sagely dubbed "mini serial narratives":

http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/writing-tools/115607/how-journalists-are-using-facebook-twitter-to-write-mini-serial-narratives/

7. BLATHER
a) What a person did/bought/saw (not in 4 or 5)/ate.
b) Entertaining and possibly cultural significant blather.

8. BUILDING SOCIAL CAPITAL and/or COMMUNITY?
Personal jury is out. I am still waiting for contributions about this.

9. SELLING STUFF
Not same as #1--no branding/promo/books/ideas.
What George Carlin would call other persons' stuff=their shit.

10. CATEGORY IN SEARCH OF A NAME:
Instagram pics of food, faces, animals, the sky:

Input: value to people when they consume Tweets



1. INFORMATION
a) world events
b) ideas
c) what other people ate/did; what their pets ate/did
d) information exchange re: practicalities of life.

2. CURATION OF IDEAS
Source of stories/art/photographs/films to look at and read.

3. SENSE OF CONNECTEDNESS
This would be fleeting--electronic only--different from community.

4. SENSE OF COMMUNITY
This is a bigger issue I am exploring; hoping for contributions.


5. ENTERTAINMENT
Is this the same as procrastination/time waster/filler or does that deserve its own category heading?

6. GENUINE PROFESSIONAL NETWORKING
?? Jury is out on this also. Research is ongoing.