Twitter: The Conversation Behind the Conversation
I am back from Las Vegas where I was covering the megafight between Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto. (My article here.) When I cover events as a reporter, I am fascinated by the conversations going on underneath the event. For example, a lot of the reporters covering the fight were not only scoring it and taking notes for a story, they were also using Twitter to describe what they were seeing and to throw out bon mots. I was at a medical technology conference a month ago and it was the same thing. I know that many of you have experienced the same phenomenon. And when we don’t attend a conference, we follow it through tweets; there is often more interesting debates happening on Twitter, than at the actual event. Thus, social media is profoundly shaping opinion. This is a relatively new phenomenon and it presents all sorts of interesting issues, including a cottage industry in aggregating opinions and reacting to them. Dan Woods has a good article in Forbes about the aggregation of social media that is worth checking out. Companies, like Radian6, are helping companies monitor this information and essentially get intelligence on what is being said. So, for example, if a politician is talking and getting negative feedback, he can react immediately and change course to better shape his on-and off-line reputation. Is this ability to react in real-time and shape public opinion defeat the purpose of the social media free-for-all?
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Gary Andrew Poole, Tweets Tube. Tweets Tube said: Twitter: The Conversation Behind the Conversation http://bit.ly/1r1qDK [...]
I find Twitter fascinating for the same reason. I’m curious though if it’s just us journalists craving these concise observations about news events or if non-reporterly types are listening in on cluster tweets as well.
(Put another way, I wonder whether Twitter is just journalists and social media types talking to each other.)
Good point. I think there is definitely a bit of that. But much of the Twitter conversations I have “overheard” are not generated by journalists; I find it interesting to read the different perspectives from audience members.
In response to another comment. See in context »