Reading Charlie Brooker’s column in The Guardian today about how Twitter is a “monumentally pointless social networking thingamajig”, I thought how, as a Twitter user, I could write about how wrong he is and how Twitter is an extremely useful tool for journalists. After all, experts such as Paul Bradshaw adore it, as do seasoned journalists like Jemima Kiss swear by it. So why, after almost a year, have I still not ‘got it’? Why do I still find it to be a slightly amusing distraction, rather than the bastion of web 2.0 that everyone is proclaiming it to be.
As I write this, I’m constantly checking Sarah Hartley’s excellent blog post to avoid looking like a twit, though I’m not sure how successful I’ll be. In general, it seems that Twitter users don’t take to kindly to criticism of their toy. With celebrities on board such as Stephen Fry and Phillip Schofield on board, the site has been gaining a lot of publicity and, as Sarah points out, a lot of criticism. While I may not agree with all that they say, even though I am a Twitter user myself, I can understand some of their points.
I tried to think of a time where Twitter had helped me in some way that could not have been done without it. I have used it to promote this blog and Journalism Today and I can see that it has attracted an audience to an extent. Due to the nature of my followers, that has no doubt brought some media professionals here too. In fact, thinking about it, it probably had a hand in getting this on journalism.co.uk as Laura Oliver informed me via Twitter. This helped to raise my online profile and drew some traffic to my blog, but I am fairly sure that it would have been up there had I not been on Twitter anyway.
I realise though, that I tend to use Twitter as a more professional version of Facebook. Rather than actively trying to source stories and opinion, I tend to remain active on there so that, if I need to, I have an easy way to contact the professionals that I wish to, just as I do with social contacts on Facebook. I do not have these same contacts across both social networks, so I tend to use both.
I’m not going to deny that for an aspiring journalist, it can be a handy tool, though I don’t believe it to be as important as some make out. When I read Paul Bradshaws assertion of Dave Lee as one to follow on Twitter because he is a “former journalism student and excellent blogger who landed a plum job at the BBC after graduating. Get the point?” I sighed a little. The implication that by being active on Twitter, you will have a much higher chance of getting a good job as a journalist is, to me, as inconceivable as it is exaggerated. Azeem Ahmad is as good example of any that having a strong web presence doesn’t guarantee a job in the industy.
It also makes me despair when I see Twitter users brownnosing the celebrity twits. I followed Stephen Fry for a while (it was the done thing, after all), but became fed up of reading the regular @stephenfry ‘validate me’ tweets that he seems to garner. The majority of the people I follow are in the media too, so what it is like amongst the general Twitter population I don’t even want to imagine.
I guess that the point of this rant is that, in my opinion, Twitter really isn’t that useful. It is occassionally interesting and, I admit, I do tend to log in most days to see what is going. My contributions to the site vary though, but rarely get beyond the inanities of what I am thinking at the time (which is often about my stomach.) 70 odd people clearly want to read this though, or do they? Perhaps, like me, they use Twitter almost as an address book, just in case they want to get in touch with me about something. Perhaps, for the non-celebrity, professional user, this is the main function of Twitter.
If, after reading this, you wish to follow me, I’m @toddnash and you can look forward to hearing about how hungry I am, the interesting things I’ve found down the toilets of Kings Place and how Reading are getting on.
Tags: charlie brooker, facebook, Guardian, paul bradshaw, phillip schofield, stephen fry, Todd Nash, twitter
