Someone whose opinion I generally respect posted a link to a Salon article hating on Twitter the other day, and I found myself profoundly disagreeing. I’ve been meaning to discuss my own feelings about the microblogging site for awhile now, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity.
I’ve only been using Twitter for about a month now. I was a late adopter for several reasons, many of which are listed in the Salon blog. I found Twitter pointless, useless and, most importantly, unprofessional. There was something about bursting off 140 unedited characters that seemed to collide violently with everything I’d learned in journalism school. I’ve seen what kind of mistakes can happen as newsrooms rush to post breaking news online, and Twitter just sounded like a recipe for disaster.
The first time I actually used Twitter, my then-roommate and I returned from a quick run to the grocery store to find a slew of emergency vehicles at an intersection near our apartment complex. When none of the local news sites had any information, we turned to Twitter. Even though KOMU wasn’t reporting anything on their website, we learned from their Twitter feed that shots had been fired and a reporter was at the scene. Okay, Twitter not so bad.
But I still wasn’t sure I wanted to hand my life over to yet another social networking site. I couldn’t care less about celebrity (or worse, preteen) twits, and I still felt microblogging was of limited use in a newsroom setting. Most of the media outlets I would have wanted to follow only posted a collection of headline links, anyway – nothing I couldn’t already get from their websites. It wasn’t until that I was basically threatened with the prospect of tweeting for a grade in a class this semester that I finally signed up for an account. That was late last month.
At first, it was hard to establish a regular rhythm. Posting three or four status updates a day typically makes your Facebook friends want to kill you. But tweeting multiple times in the same day is a socially acceptable norm on Twitter. Too bad I forgot to tweet even once for days at a time. Part of what I miss coming to Twitter from Facebook is commenting on statuses. Sure, there’s retweeting, but I think I prefer a greater degree of interactivity.
I’m still trying to strike the right balance for my Twitter feed. While not generally a fan of lifecasting, I do post the occasional “here’s where I’m going” or “here’s what I’m doing” tweet, especially if it’s a.) funny or b.) related to professional development. I really like Twitter’s potential for self-promotion, as you can use the audience you’ve already built to test market new online projects and ideas. This is where I think Twitter has the greatest potential as a tool for journalists. I think KOMU has the right idea when they direct audiences to their reporters’ personal Twitter feeds. The right blend of reporting, self-promotion and personality might just get some of them hired.
Twitter dislikes? Stylistically, I think it’s a nightmare. I keep an AP stylebook in my living room because I think there’s something beautiful about the uniformity it creates when reporting the news. I’m just not comfortable using numerals for numbers less than one, and I never know how to punctuate a tweet that ends with a URL from bit.ly. But good grammar aside, I’ve certainly embraced Twitter with a lot less reluctance than anticipated.
In other news, development continues on a series of new media projects for KBIA. With an official launch date not until mid- to late-February, I’m not quite ready to start promoting it yet here, but I’ll chime in next week with an official end to the radio silence I haven’t been maintaining very well.
