Three months ago I sat down with some friends and they asked me how come their facebook page (news feed) is filled with updates from me. I responded by saying ‘I installed the twitter app in facebook, and now my updates on twitter appear as facebook status messages as well’. Everyone asked me ‘twitter what?!’ and I tried explaining it without sounding too geeky.. 😉
Last week the same friends asked me ‘what’s twitter good for?’ and ‘I’m thinking of opening up an account – can you help?’. Oh boy, the age of (twitter) innocence has passed. After this week’s battle between CNNBRK (CNN Breaking News) and Aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) it seems twitter is the new pet on the block and everyone wants one, including Oprah. And twitter has also showed some muscle, by disabling the ‘un-follow’ option from both CNNBRK and Aplusk, to not lose users after the battle is over..
But what are we talking about here people? what exactly Ashton is saying to his 1,140,000 followers? is twitter still the tool to convey meaningful messages or is twitter merely the tool to ‘launder’ gossip and give them ‘a meaning’? Yuval Dror and Lior Zoref both beat the crowd by posting their own views on the subject, but whereas Yuval is still looking for meaning at twitter (maybe because they have no business model yet?), Lior crowned it as ‘twitter revolution has only began‘, pointing to the CNNBRK vs. Aplusk saga and Susan Boyle‘s phenomenon. Gal Mor also published his views, in this appropriately titled ‘Ashton’s and CNN’s publicity stunt‘ post.
Ashton attracts 1m followers because, in my opinion, he has access to mainstream media, and gives us (social-media-buffs) the feeling that we’re not alone in this (twittering).. I’ll probably won’t pay much attention to most of Ashton’s updates (except his ustream videos), but it’s good to know that the dude who’s married to Demi Moore is a social media geek just like us… 😉
What do you think? are you one of Aplusk’s followers? considering to be? has twitter lost its innocence?
