QQ Queue is a special feature covering widespread weeping across the blogosphere. Crybabies beware: this feature is ruthless.
If you’re in tune with the tech scene, you’ve probably heard about the Kutcher/CNN race to 1 million Twitter devotees. The dashing celeb threw down the gauntlet when he noticed both his own massive following and CNN’s similar numbers. As you can see from the link above, though, the battle was not one-sided. CNN tried to keep pace with breaking news updates about the current standings. In the end, Ashton won, but not before sucking world-class companies like EA into the ridiculous scrim.
Enter Oprah. Billionaire, Cultural Icon, Celebrity so big She gets the words that describe Her capitalized. Oprah saw CNN and Ashton duking it out and decided to enter the fray. Today she’s hosting Kutcher and (gasp) joining Twitter! This is…ridiculous.
First of all, Twitter from people like, come to think of it almost anyone, is pointless. Yes there are stories of Twitter helping people out of tight spots (like Egyptian prison). Yes there are some journalistic benefits. For the most part, though, Twitter is just adding to the noise. Knowing that someone is eating a sandwich or drinking coffee or getting a haircut (all of which are being tweeted as I write this) is not relationship building, despite what Twitter’s promo video says. These little blurbs are no more real human interactions than a video camera cataloguing a person’s life would be.
So why do I care? I care because every tech blogger in the world seems to care. There are posts and posts and posts decrying Ashton’s and Oprah’s foray onto the Twitter scene, claiming celebrities don’t ‘get Twitter.’ That the hordes of celebrity followers will degrade the overall quality of tweets. That celebrities use Twitter for inane babble and self-promotion. Meanwhile, these same bloggers link to their own Twitter pages, which are nothing more than links back to their blog. WAKE UP! This is what Twitter is. A social medium designed around 140 character blips of communication is bound to be pointless 90% of the time. There is this weird assumption that because Twitter can be useful it should or will be useful all the time.
In fact, sites like Twitter and Facebook (more so Facebook (whose status updates are essentially tweets), since Twitter still isn’t making much money) rely on a certain level of user apathy to generate advertising revenue. If social sites were so engaging, so completely packed with meaningful human interaction that you wouldn’t click away because you didn’t want to miss anything, they’d go under in a day.
Quit your QQ, blogosphere. Celebrity tweets aren’t so different from your own. Yes they’re self-promoting. Yes they’re inane and often thoughtless. That’s what you get from a social media meant to be instant and brief. You want a ‘real’ interaction with Oprah? Invite Her over for coffee.
