Step Right Up and See the Twitter

Facebook exists for one purpose only and it’s not to re-connect high school friends to annoy people with update about non-existent farms, though it does these things very well. Like any other commercial site, Facebook exists to make money. That’s fine, but a bit boring. I’m more interested in our culture’s new sideshow barker: Twitter. Much has been said and written about Twitter and Facebook, but the ways that Twitter connects users to ideas, to new information at dizzying speeds can be disorienting, a little dirty, and often a damn fine way to waste time. But used by a quality barker, Twitter brings in more consumers—more eyes step inside to see the show.

Millions of Facebook users detailing what they like, what they don’t like, who their friends are, where they go and how they spend their leisure and business time is worth billions of dollars to marketers. One can make the argument that Facebook was not created to gather information and sell it, but it evolved into a information gravity well which became an asset. Capitalizing on that asset is fine. That Facebook users not only sign up to be part of what is now the largest depository of social data but are willingly giving away the value of the intimate details of their lives is again fine: we consent to their control of our data when we sign up. I have no problem with it or with Mark Zuckerberg and his team monetizing that data. No one made me or anyone else sign up for Facebook. That our data may be permanently indexed and searchable even if we delete our Facebook accounts is perhaps a bit scary, and Lisa Barone makes a great case for the dangers of Facebook’s privacy issues here.

Twitter too wants to stream revenue from its data streams. It therefore also exists to make money. Uproxx exists to make money—shocking, I know. One can extend that statement to nearly all adults in a capitalistic society: we exist as money-making machines or we will probably cease to exist. This piece exists to hopefully make readers think, but it too primarily exists to make money. For Uproxx, for me. Less so for me.

I want money. My creditors want money. The grocery store and the bar want my money. Money is not the root of all evil; only fools believe that. The fears that come from being hungry and evicted and homeless and above all fear of being vulnerable to those with more money is the root of most private evil.

The root of public evil is being able to exploit information. BP and the Minerals Management Service have done a fine job of exploiting information to perhaps ultimately destroy an ecosystem. Maybe Deepwater Horizon will destroy the planet. What is true is that information about the catastrophe is the most valuable asset in determining blame, avoiding responsibility, and understanding the scope of the disaster.

Unlike a BP, Twitter isn’t yet able to exploit information itself although there’s much more information to mine than on Facebook despite the fact that Facebook has hundreds of millions more users. The individuals and corporations best using Twitter use it to move users to their blog or corporate homepage, to their e-commerce site, their hosted online discussions where they can sell their products or at the very least learn how to serve their clients, customers, readers, et cetera better.

McLuhan, as always, is right. The medium of 140 characters is the massage—it is the point—get to the point or be gone. Twitter’s 140 character limit isn’t just about brevity and wit, although it quickly proves that old maxim, it is about greater penetration of real and virtual social networks. Because the tweet can and often does send the user away from Twitter, it is a much more powerful marketing tool. Bloggers realized this immediately; Tumblr users can set up their accounts to automatically send a tweet with a url for each new post. If you like it, you might click—and there’s a new pageview, a new count for Google analytics, a new image, new play on an old meme, whatever. And if it’s a really good, funny, or useful tweet, you may re-tweet it. And this is Twitter’s real power. Instead of depending on users to keep giving them data (again, this is Facebook’s business plan), Twitter simply provides a means for moving information from one server to another, to one brain to another while they index each and every tweet. The follower system provides a clue to the most useful brands and brains, but isn’t necessary for one to be friends with a large number of people to get the thoughts and ideas from a huge number of people. And in that sense, Twitter is far more useful than Facebook will ever be.

Through the networks of minds online—the hives, tubes, and webs of information consumers—new ideas are gaining far greater penetration through Twitter than Facebook. My mother uses Facebook to see pictures of my dogs and my cousin’s wedding dress and reconnect with her friends. In the real world, she is what Gladwell calls a connecter—she lives in a small town and knows everyone and everyone knows her—so that if there is something going on, she knows or knows someone who knows. She has no need of Tweets or Four Square updates or anything like that.

But for any business, blogger, or other entity who depends upon making their ideas and products available to potential consumers, there is more value in investing time into a tweet. For me, someone who inhales information, seemingly more and more voraciously, having a Twitter stream of bloggers, writers, and assorted pranksters is perhaps not necessary, but it makes my daily life more interesting and informed.

So the point here is that Twitter is superior to Facebook  at one thing: moving users to information and information to users quickly. My feed brings me stories, memes, jokes, videos, and crazy photoshops, days if not weeks before they show up on Facebook or in emails. E-commerce is going to depend far more on Twitter, than any other form of present social media. How Twitter evolves and how it delivers to new platforms as they arise will be compelling to watch.

Step right, ladies and gents, step inside and see the freak show.