New Journalism: how your tweets are replacing an institution
The events that led to this post:
The idea for this post came to me when I saw a car go through a living room. OK, I lied. I didn’t see the accident happen, but I saw the vivid aftermath. A classic fail. “I got to post this to twitter,” was the first thought that raced through my head. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my phone or a camera on me. If I had taken a pic, it would have looked something like the one above.
This event got me thinking about the power of twitter. We use twitter to converse, but it’s also a game using social proof and liking to target the subconscious.
You’re playing a massive multiplayer game:
You may only use twitter to follow your friends or interesting people, but new followers excite you. Maybe it’s you ego. Maybe you’re promoting a MLM scam. Whatever it is, you like it when your follower count grows.
If you think of twitter as a game, then you are both a player and a point to be had. As a player your objective is to get the most points. You become someone else’s point when you follow them. (This is a social thought experiment, so please don’t take offense)
As of this post, @cnnbrk has the top spot overall, but they are not the only winners. You can have the most followers in your geographic area or the niche you tweet about. Yes, twitter is a tool used by businesses, but in most cases, there’s an individual behind each account, adding friends and participating in the conversation.
You have an incentive to stay interesting, and reply to your tweeps. By doing so, your follower count is (almost) sure to grow.
How your tweets are replacing an institution:
An institution is dying. News dotting the world is more available than ever. This is not the death of the well written and researched editorial, but soon everyone will have access to the tools needed to post and consume breaking news on a hyper local scale. You neighbor saved a life. You witnessed the bursting of a water main. In my case-you saw a car sticking out of a house. These are all extremely local events with mass appeal. Mass appeal could mean your followers, but if the story is interesting, it could spread much further (through the use of retweets).
All of a sudden, you’re the reporter on the scene when breaking news happens. You’re the photo journalist with you camera phone in hand. With 140 characters you aren’t going to change the world, but your followers might spread a story. You do it for the reward of social proof. But most of all, you do it for the game. The upward ticking of followers.
Technology will advance, and soon your photos will be as good as those on the front page of the New York Times. You will stream video from any smart phone. You do it for social (not monetary) gain. While facebook tries, twitter is the only platform that can and will succeed at replacing the institution behind local journalism.
Please let me know your thoughts on my first blog post in the comments below.
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