Journal

On Tyler and Twitter

In his recent piece for the Financial Times, Bliss of a Twitter-free moment Monocle editor Tyler Brûlé has taken aim at Twitter:

‘As I silently repeated those four syllables (“what is ‘Twitt-ah’”?), I felt a wave of envy. How wonderful to live in a highly evolved digital society and not have been tainted by yet another media fad, I thought.’

I’m not interested in a debate about the likely longevity of Twitter, but in unpicking some of the underlying feeling that I think contributes to Brûlé‘s rather odd piece.

There are a few themes to his argument that aren’t so much about Twitter itself but social networks in general – and it’s here where I have some sympathy.

He complains of the endless requests demanding his time, his registration, his engagement with social applications like Twitter and LinkedIn. And he’s right. Social networks are demanding and the calls on our attention from a each and every service we signup for, or are invited too, is tiring. In that, there is a lesson about the responsibility that networks have to demand of our time with respect and care.

Added to this, our presence online is increasingly distributed and difficult to manage and control – the fingerprints we leave on each service we touch linger. Our social presence often long outlasts our interest in a particular service or app. We’re connected and findable in ways now that we’re still determining our comfort with. We’re, as a generation, learning all the time about our adjusting attitudes to what’s private, what constitutes ‘friendship’, where our barriers are, and the extent to which engage with others. It’s happening thrillingly fast, but it’s easy to appreciate and share some of Brûlé‘s uneasiness.

And yet, in singling out Twitter, Brûlé picks a poor target. He rails against the inanity of tweets about everyday activity, but in doing so betrays a misunderstanding of what Twitter is and can be, and falls back on a rather tired stereotype.

I’d argue that what Twitter is most fundamentally about is listening. And just like any crowded conversation, you need to pick what you listen to, and Twitter – unlike Facebook, perhaps – provides you with the means to control the volume, to decide who you listen to, and who hears what you say.

For me, Twitter has made me better connected, smarter and with a sharper sense of the now. I’m connected in a way I would have thought unimaginable with not just to my peers, but some of my heroes too. It’s allowed me to share in conversations between the smartest minds in my industry and learn from them, at speed. It’s also given me a powerful ability to pick up on real time reaction – whether at conferences, or in response to news events.

And it’s this last reason – the ability to listen, monitor and assess opinion in real time, is where I’m most surprised at Brûlé for missing Twitter’s strength and potential, because if there is anyone in ‘traditional’ publishing has a true understanding and attention to brand, reputation and experience, it’s Tyler Brûlé.

In the course of my work and through my own experiences, I’ve seen wonderful examples of brands engaging through Twitter, from the digital companies you’d expect to the local authorities you might not – precisely because they’re listening to their customers, not just picking up on problems, but testing ideas and engaging with them in incredibly fluid ways. Not communicating at, but with.

Tyler Brûlé concludes his piece by confidently predicting that Twitter won’t last. I’d suggest that what isn’t going to last, is a belief that creating conversations with your customers, your audience doesn’t matter. It’s never mattered more.