today’s post on terrystarbucker.com “has twitter jumped the shark? sort of.” is typical of a trend I’ve seen in the wake of the great kutcher vs cnn follower race. terry compares the news to the happy days cliche signifying the end is near. the race for followers that he decries is not a new phenomenon and sure, there will be some who try to monetize their bloated follower counts. I disagree, however, with terry’s assessment that this means twitter’s utility as a medium for conversations is at an end. I posted this comment on his blog:
the followers race has little if any effect on twitter users who want conversations. I don’t follow CNN for conversations – I keep it in my news column. I don’t really expect a conversation with a Scoble, for that matter – I just like to see what he has to say. But my ‘listener’ time is a fraction of my ‘exchange’ time. There are any number of twitter tools that let you pull the stuff you want to the top of the pile. The power of Twitter is that it is as large as your follower count and as small as the number of users you converse with regularly – and that power is undiluted by the ashtons and the oprahs.
is Twitter dead as a clubhouse for early adopters? yeah, most likely. but I believe the service is just hitting its stride as a medium for conversations – and those conversations can reshape processes within the enterprise and turn the broadcast model on its head.