Topics in Digital Media – Fall 09

Before the format boo birds come out, let me just say I tried multiple ways to get this .mov file into mpeg4 to no avail.  Even Handbrake crashed on me three times, once after a reboot.  Here’s proof of that:

So much for simplicity.

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Humor me and listen to the video below as you read my last installment of Twitter Trending Topics (TTT) hell.

Picture that the singer is actually TTT, insisting in a very creepy way that I just don’t understand him.  He lurks outside my computer window(s) and I reject his advances.  He won’t let me let him down so easily.  No, I’ve gotta spend some time.

There are loads of other, independent software services taking advantage of TTT’s apparently polyamorous and obsessive ways.  Some are devoted only to TTT and not his mother, Twitter.  I checked out brizzly.com at the urging of one Mushon, but you need an invite (I’ve applied.)  By the looks of what they show in the preview area, the most useful feature is a follower mute button, whereby you may shut someone up, but not completely stop following them.  Might be useful for your mother, or maybe Jay Rosen.

Another site, this one hopelessly devoted to TTT, comes from an ex of mine–the wonderful PR agency, Waggener Edstrom.  Their site, Twendz, attempts to measure tweet sentiment.  Here is a nearly real-time screenshot:

PR agency, Waggener Edstrom, gets intimate with the TTT hive.

The topic I selected to examine from the list of “hot topics” (seemed fairly synced with TTT) was #theworst. Since Twendz measures by positive (green bar), neutral (white) and negative (red), I thought a topic about “the worst” would be funny. Would the algorithm read anything positive about “the worst”? To be fair, Wagged makes it clear that this puppy is in beta (sounds like Google!) and that, much like the Turing Test we’ve read about, the Twendz brain does not recognize sarcasm. So my choice of topic is rather torturous.

I froze the Twendz screen after I clicked on the neutral bar which highlighted the neutral tweets essentially occurring “right now” on that topic.  Notice the final “neutral” tweet: trending topics…boring.  That tweet says it all.  The idea of Twendz is cool though, in the same way I thought this travelogue topic would be cool.

Steven Levy at Wired might think TTT is cool, too…

“It [tweet search] means anyone can monitor the hottest current topic of discussion or simply get a sense of what people are saying, in real time…” (149).

Funny, he doesn’t touch on why this ability might be important.  He calls the hack of the search functionality  ”the most transformative” for Twitter and backs it up with some economic proof, but not what we can DO with the hack.  I took this for granted, too.  In fact, I chose to ignore search news last week (Google, Bing partner with Twitter) in favor of TTT.  Yet, the time I’ve spent with TTT makes me realize this was a poor choice.  Search is interesting, and many aspects of Twitter are interesting.  A window into the hive mind is the opposite of interesting.

I’m not even sure “the sense” of trends generated by the users of Twitter, and measured by so many, provide any real economic value.  It seems more direct forms of research (focus groups, surveys, real-time viewing meters, etc.), although flawed in well-studied ways, would be more effective.  The stupidity of the mass is just too strong to overcome in TTT.  I say this with a deep affection for Twitter, as a whole.

The services I use around Twitter (mostly TweetDeck) are valued most for their ability to let me get more granular with my tweet stream.  I categorize, search, read and tweet all from one friendly interface.  I do not, in my normal usage, look at TTT.  Now, I know why.

One last disturbing note, in the form of a desperate plea from Twitter founder Ev Williams :

“We want to make Twitter indispensable, so it tells people what they want to know and hopefully not much else” (151).

That doesn’t sound desperate.  In fact, kind of like the Death Cab for Cutie song, it sounds nice.  The melody of the words fit the sweet strains of the simple interface we love in Twitter.  Listen closely though, and you might think about the Greenfield video from Picnic.  The technology is telling us what we need and want, not the other way around.  Perhaps this is why I reject TTT.

I’ve known plenty of smart audiences or masses.  Ask anyone who loves live theater.  The Twitter technology is telling us we are dumb, and this is tough to see because it is using our collective inputs.  That phrase “collective input” is also a key difference from other “smart mass” scenarios.  Basically, I’m swimming in Lanier water here, and find it cold, as well.  Time to dry off and file a restraining order against TTT.

Levy, Steven. “Twitter’s founders created a simple messaging service.  Its users turned it into something huge.  So the question now: Who’s in charge?” Wired Nov. 2009: 146-151.