My long winded answer to why is twitter popular
I've really thought about this subject long and hard and i believe i have a valid opinion on this subject
summary: twitter is useless by itself but A.. the principle of “power in numbers” and the compulsive behavior of people that gives twitter power. B. Things are more interesting when we see a little or a lot of ourselves in it or we help create it.
details:
A. The principle of “power in numbers” and the compulsive behavior of people that gives twitter power.
1. Twitter by itself is not a very interesting thing, from a computer science standpoint there are no technical breakthroughs behind it and for folks that use facebook, myspace .. they probably think its wack, because twitter's features are basic in comparison.
2. The power twitter seemingly have is: a bunch of people are choosing to focus on it and when a bunch of people focus on anything it becomes powerful. An example of power in numbers can be seen if we looked at a $100 dollar bill. In reality a $100 bill is resume paper and ink, but everyone associate that piece of paper with what can be bought with it, this causes us to confuse the paper as powerful when it really is the thing that we can get in exchange for the paper that is really interesting.
3. compulsive behavior people have: So what can be done when a whole bunch of people are choosing to focus on something in this case it's twitter, well I think for business owners twitter can be used to easily build relationships with customers only because of the compulsive behavior people have when he or she makes up their mind to pay something attention.
Ex: As a business owner i would want to make money so I need people to pay attention to what i am selling so that when they need something my business can be on the top of their mind, so if I asked myself what are people reading all the time, all day long (twitter). Since a bunch of people are choosing to use twitter then I can keep people updated on what i am selling and what i am doing. a real world example can be seen by the company Dell (http://twitter.com/dell). When you follow dell, you're kept up to date on all their sales and the new products. To Dell twitter is powerful because it is a really fast and cheap way to communicate with their customers. This perceived value to twitter is only true because their customers are choosing to visit twitter.com every 5 minutes. Dell’s customers think twitter is really powerful because they can learn about the sales as quick as dell puts it out there.
Ex. If I was a performer I would want people to keep their mind on me so that they can remain interested in me and buy my performances ( music, drawings, movies etc.). Also, I would want to know what they’re interested in so I want to read what people are thinking about, because we're righting our thoughts on twitter all the time then we can be an open book to whoever is interested.
B. Things are more interesting when we see a little or a lot of ourselves in it and or we can be part of the creative process.
I was watching Marvin Gaye documentary and he said what makes his songs popular is he tries to sell a little of the customer to the customer. I agree with this and I think its relevant to twitter. We like to see ourselves in things because it makes it more familiar.
An opportunity to voice our opinion and contribute to creation songs\shows\articles etc. reminds us of something we know or creates a certain emotion in us and this tends to be an enjoyable experience. Twitter helps to create this enjoyable experience because we're making to time to use it and few folks are realizing this benefit. Media producers ( television shows, music, articles producers etc.) can make more interactive stuff when the customers are contributing to the creative process of developing the media.
We have TV shows (cnn, bet, mtv, etc. ) that include twitter comments, this makes the viewers part of the creative process because their comments are included.
However; in my opinion no tv show have figured out how to incorporate twitter correctly. Here is the direction people are trying to take it twitter: guys and girls love to get together to watch sports\soaps opera\movies etc. and argue, joke, cry about it, with twitter we can get to a point where we can watch the T.O reality show or real world or the nba finals and we can read the comments of our friends no matter where they are and this is interesting because people love to gather around and socialize, twitter helps us do this socializing just like people gathered around a camp fires to share
summary: twitter is useless by itself but A.. the principle of “power in numbers” and the compulsive behavior of people that gives twitter power. B. Things are more interesting when we see a little or a lot of ourselves in it or we help create it.
details:
A. The principle of “power in numbers” and the compulsive behavior of people that gives twitter power.
1. Twitter by itself is not a very interesting thing, from a computer science standpoint there are no technical breakthroughs behind it and for folks that use facebook, myspace .. they probably think its wack, because twitter's features are basic in comparison.
2. The power twitter seemingly have is: a bunch of people are choosing to focus on it and when a bunch of people focus on anything it becomes powerful. An example of power in numbers can be seen if we looked at a $100 dollar bill. In reality a $100 bill is resume paper and ink, but everyone associate that piece of paper with what can be bought with it, this causes us to confuse the paper as powerful when it really is the thing that we can get in exchange for the paper that is really interesting.
3. compulsive behavior people have: So what can be done when a whole bunch of people are choosing to focus on something in this case it's twitter, well I think for business owners twitter can be used to easily build relationships with customers only because of the compulsive behavior people have when he or she makes up their mind to pay something attention.
Ex: As a business owner i would want to make money so I need people to pay attention to what i am selling so that when they need something my business can be on the top of their mind, so if I asked myself what are people reading all the time, all day long (twitter). Since a bunch of people are choosing to use twitter then I can keep people updated on what i am selling and what i am doing. a real world example can be seen by the company Dell (http://twitter.com/dell). When you follow dell, you're kept up to date on all their sales and the new products. To Dell twitter is powerful because it is a really fast and cheap way to communicate with their customers. This perceived value to twitter is only true because their customers are choosing to visit twitter.com every 5 minutes. Dell’s customers think twitter is really powerful because they can learn about the sales as quick as dell puts it out there.
Ex. If I was a performer I would want people to keep their mind on me so that they can remain interested in me and buy my performances ( music, drawings, movies etc.). Also, I would want to know what they’re interested in so I want to read what people are thinking about, because we're righting our thoughts on twitter all the time then we can be an open book to whoever is interested.
B. Things are more interesting when we see a little or a lot of ourselves in it and or we can be part of the creative process.
I was watching Marvin Gaye documentary and he said what makes his songs popular is he tries to sell a little of the customer to the customer. I agree with this and I think its relevant to twitter. We like to see ourselves in things because it makes it more familiar.
An opportunity to voice our opinion and contribute to creation songs\shows\articles etc. reminds us of something we know or creates a certain emotion in us and this tends to be an enjoyable experience. Twitter helps to create this enjoyable experience because we're making to time to use it and few folks are realizing this benefit. Media producers ( television shows, music, articles producers etc.) can make more interactive stuff when the customers are contributing to the creative process of developing the media.
We have TV shows (cnn, bet, mtv, etc. ) that include twitter comments, this makes the viewers part of the creative process because their comments are included.
However; in my opinion no tv show have figured out how to incorporate twitter correctly. Here is the direction people are trying to take it twitter: guys and girls love to get together to watch sports\soaps opera\movies etc. and argue, joke, cry about it, with twitter we can get to a point where we can watch the T.O reality show or real world or the nba finals and we can read the comments of our friends no matter where they are and this is interesting because people love to gather around and socialize, twitter helps us do this socializing just like people gathered around a camp fires to share
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