140Char

There’s a reason i don’t blog about quantum physics or existentialism. It’s because I don’t know enough about them to offer anything worthwhile, and I’d probably end up looking stupid.

Somehow that doesn’t seem to apply to The Daily Mail when they decide to write an inane piece about Phillip Schofield’s tweets from the Fat Duck.

Apparently the ‘journalist’ in question found it tiresome to listen to the details and see the pictures of Schofield, a British TV presenter, enjoying a £130 meal at the restaurant run by highly experimental TV chef Heston Blummenthal.

Obviously, as pointed out pretty quickly in the comments, they could have unfollowed him, rather than deciding to repeat everything in great detail, and use all of the photos he’d taken without credit or attribution – as Martin Belam pointed out.

There’s no shortage of interesting topics they could have covered instead, and no shortage of digitally-aware people who can also write a decent article. So why waste time and effort doing something so badly when the online newspapers desperately need to find ways to ensure their survival?

In amongst the turmoil of #iranelection, and the news that Twitter is starting to moderate trending topics, it’s nice to finish the week on a more humourous note.

Which is why I’m chuckling to myself about the huge number of current ReTweets:

‘Worst Daily Mail poll ever. VOTE YES to skew the results and pass it on! http://bit.ly/w4b6Q’

As of 2pm on Friday, it’s flooding the place.

And the reason for all this is the conservative right UK newspaper, The Daily Mail, whose poll of the day really does defy belief:  ‘Should the NHS allow gipsies to jump the queue?’

And the effect of Twitter probably explains why the poll is currently skewed to 85% Yes, and 15% No.

I think it’s time for anyone writing about Twitter to realise and accept that the endless debate about becoming mainstream has become redundant – it’s mainstream, please accept it, move on, and let’s talk about something else!

There are 2,360,000 Google results for ‘Twitter + mainstream’, and 144,000 for ‘curing + illness’. Make of that what you will!

Everybody Knows by Harvard Avenue on Flickr (CC Licence)

@SarahM’s post for O’Reilly, isn’t a bad post, but the two examples against accepting Twitter as mainstream did start me thinking.

The reasons for Twitter not making televised Superbowl coverage were probably the scale of the televised coverage of the event, and gaining media passes/internet connections etc to moderate a live feed for broadcast – I’ve only ever covered much smaller events, but the manpower required can be surprising, and it can be a battle to get enough staff access.

Meanwhile the lack of TV adverts carrying Twitter ids isn’t surprising – most companies will see their main website as the hub of their activity and will want to keep the list of web address down to one simple name to remember – not supply details of the website, the Facebook page, the Myspace page, the Twitter account and the Get Satisfaction page! Being UK-based, there may be TV adverts promoting Facebook pages in the U.S, but I haven’t seen any yet…

But for mainstream, I’d state the following:

CNN and BBC cite Twitter for Mumbai updates.

@wossy and @stephenfry discuss Twitter on the BBC. @schofe discusses Twitter on ITV.

The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Washington Post,  USA Today, LA Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Channel 4, The Guardian, New York Times, New Scientist, The Independent.

All in the last 2 or 3 days, and just the most mainstream titles I saw in a quick Google News search.

Meanwhile:

On Something for the Weekend, Working Lunch, On Jonathan Ross, This Morning, Channel 4 news. (I didn’t do the U.S TV channels because I have no way to tell which ones are more notable than others, and didn’t want to try and list every single use, but here’s CNN for some balance.

And of course – Twestival’s 140+ global events (with LiveEarth as broadcast and video partner!)

And to finish off -

‘If you want to know what technology will change the world, watch young mothers…and don’t watch teenage boys – young mothers have no time for any technology that isn’t useful and doesn’t work.’

Clay Shirky in 2005, via Broadstuff.

So – Twittermoms.

Can I stop yet?

No it hasn’t got the scale of TV, print media or Facebook – yet. But it’s never been about scale for anyone except those wanting eyeballs for the same old display adverts.

But social networks are built for exponential growth (in theory, if not in scalability of the backend!). And after growing 974% in 2008 (Hitwise) it’s not going to slow down now. I’m seeing more and more non-technical friends and family appearing, just as happened with Facebook – and more and more people asking me questions without trying to hide the shame of using a silly-sounding word like ‘twitter’.

So can we all accept it’s not going to get any smaller, and it’s reached the mainstream now. In a bit of time the audience will be in a similar range to the biggest social networks of the moment, and we’ll be discussing something new – maybe nano-blogging!

Obama Wins! by annethelibrarian (Flickr CC Licence)