I just finished watching critic Mark Blankenship (The Critical Condition) in a conversation on CNN all about Twitter, its supersonic rise, its current pop-cultural bloat and pundit-driven imminent demise. (Full disclosure: Art Meets Commerce and Mark are co-founders of The Critical Condition.)
It’s really fascinating to watch the rapid-fire evolution of social media that is happening all around us. Mark’s fellow commentator Pete Cashmore from mashable.com referred to something called the Gartner Hype Cycle, which describes the rise and fall of technology applications and led to some interesting discussion during the segment.
To me, it’s like living in a real-time time lapse photo. “Now they’re twittering . . . now you’re lame because you’re not . . . now you’re twittering . . . now they’re not . . . now you’re lame because you are . . . now they’re fill-in-the-blanking . . . ” You get the idea. And that whole cycle happens in about a month. Mayflies have a longer life expectancy.
What struck me most , though, was Mark’s observation that Twitter is fundamentally antithetical to what he does at The Critical Condition, which is devoted to criticism of popular culture. In his blog, Mark offers thoughtful analysis of everything from music to movies to advertising to books, and he does a terrific job of making the links between all of those things and the larger society that they are not only all products of, but that they are producing. That can’t be accomplished in 140 characters.
But he does use Twitter to point followers to whatever conversation he’s facilitating on any given day, and that, to me, is the best use of a micro blog. Not as an end unto itself, but as a means to an end, whether that’s highlighting an ongoing interaction or sowing a seed for a future interaction.
And that’s kind of a relief. Fragmented thoughts that aren’t anchored to more complete exchanges feel chaotic to me, like a radio that is picking up two different stations simultaneously. Discrete tweets leave me bemused, but looking at the Twitter application in a larger context shows me its place our cultural conversation. And that’s good (for me), because Twitter—or whatever the next big thing turns out to be—is here to stay.