Thursday, March 5th, 2009...11:11 am
Good News: Twitter has jumped the shark!
Remember the moment when Facebook went from the exclusive realm of your cool friends, to something that your grandma was on? That same moment just happened on Twitter…and not just to me. How can I tell that Twitter has hit the tipping point?
Well, first, check out the latest series of Doonesbury strips. It’s funny because it’s true!
In a similar vein, read this little piece. The assessment here is: it was cool when Wonkette was twittering about the latest DC gossip. Now that aging Congress members are posting about their standing committees on soybean production – not so cool.
The real issue is that Twitter has now achieved a critical mass of public awareness. This isn’t good news if you’re into being ahead of the curve. But it’s great news if you want to communicate with a big increasingly, diverse crowd online.
ps. Don’t get the “jump the shark” reference? Go here and learn this useful meme…
3 Comments
March 5th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
You’re misusing the phrase “jumped the shark” – see your link. Twitter hasn’t become desperate or absurd (generally denoting the beginning of the end). It is becoming a major part of popular culture and gaining mass awareness. It will take some time for that awareness to be translated into use, though. I think it will be a while before people complain about their parents following them on twitter the way they do about their parents sending them friend requests on facebook.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Ouch – I knew I was going to get called on misusing “jump the shark” in the canonical sense. Curse that wikipedia! Curse that definitive Fonzi moment!
On the other hand, I think I could argue that Twitter has become both desperate and absurd. To whit…
In the course of researching my hard-hitting post, I found that if you google the phrase “my mom is on twitter”, you get 1170 results; Interestingly, “my dad is on twitter” gets only 69 results. But “my dog is on twitter” gets 10 results – that, my friend, is the sound of the shark circling…
Thanks for the comment!
March 7th, 2009 at 8:07 am
I think you are mistaking the number of google posts relating to “my dad is on twitter”; I get 689, not 69.
By the way, cats twitter far more than dogs. “My cat is on twitter” gets 70 hits. This is not an inconsequential fact, as you will see if you read David Pogue’s blog posting entitled “Fundraising, via Twitter (with Cats!). http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/fundraising-via-twitter-with-cats/
Absurd yes, but relevant to aims *Social Ch@nge* promotes.
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