Twitter Me Stupid
Google CEO Eric Schmidt isn’t known for his people skills but his analytic abilities have never been in doubt. So while I’m no fan of Twitter, calling it “the poor man’s email” suggests Eric hasn’t been online for a while, and certainly has never composed a tweet. But that can’t be true. It’s easier to believe he’s never met a poor man.
Twitter is a broadcast system; one to many or sometimes one to none. On Twitter the illusion of privacy that is inherent when using email is shredded, even if people do have to ask permission to “follow you”. Certainly this was true when our congressional representatives Twittered during a Presidential address, they weren’t emailing each other, they were broadcasting their response to the president’s address to their “followers”.
While mistaking Twitter for email is one thing, it pales in comparison to Twitters own lack of, well, self awareness, for lack of a better word. Their recent preview of the plan to build in a search capacity and then compete against Google is amazingly delusional.
As we all know the value of the Google search is relevancy, validity and accuracy. The reason brands pay for words like “digital camera” is that the results are relevant to the consumer and will bring that same consumer to their site. This is the not so secret Google secret sauce.
So explain to me how this will work on Twitter? Advertisers will buy the term digital camera and they will get tweets from samyx talking about his digital camera? Or maybe even Barry Judge, the CMO of Best Buy tweets, but will any of these tweets deliver visitors to a site, store or money in a cash register?
Not so much, allowing Eric to continue in his ignorance about Twitter without meaningful consequence.
