Slings, arrows, and tweets
The question can no longer be deferred, avoided, postponed. The big question. The defining question. In ages past, the dilemma may have been more existential, more ethical, as iconically expressed by the Prince of Denmark in Shakespeare’s most famous soliloquy. But twenty-first-century man and woman have a zeitgeist query of equal consequence, a historically unprecedented soul-searching question to ask of themselves: to tweet or not to tweet.
Yes, it’s gotten that big. Twitter made the leap from net-geek cogniscenti to hoi polloi some time ago, of course, and from there to brands and businesses. But here lately, it’s like you can’t squeeze your way through the inter-tubes without bumping your elbows or scraping your knees against yet another Twitter client or Twitter blog analysis or—most frightening of all—another marketing consultant hawking his or her expert wares on how best to build your brand 140 characters (or less) at a time.
The inner tweeting circle used to say that there are two kinds of people in the world: people who get Twitter, and people who don’t. (Personally, I think the two kinds of people in the world are people who divide the world into two kinds of people and people who don’t.) In my experience, practically everyone at least starts off in the second category. The reactions of the uninitiated upon first hearing Twitter’s purpose and paradigm explained…well, not getting it puts it mildly. The idea of communicating the most mundane minutiae of your day—constantly—a few broken, abbreviation-riddled sentences at a time, seems like such a collossal waste of energy to newbies that many actually get angry at the thought. For them, it’s the apocalyptic sign that our internet era has finally gone too far, that the last vestige of public/private distinction is being stripped away, and even the most tech-savy and gadget-loving among them start preaching luddite dreams of uncomplicated pastoral bliss.
And yet, somehow, sometime, some of them eventually give Twitter a try. I don’t know how many find that it bears out their worst fears. But a percentage converts. A percentage becomes addicted. The world shifts on its axis, and a revolution quietly takes hold.
For us, here at Big, Twitter is the rough beast that is merely slouching toward Bethlehem. Its hour has not yet arrived, and so our answer to the question of the moment is “no.” For some of our clients, we decide that the answer should be a resounding “yes,” and we advise accordingly. But at Team Big, we have our website, we have our blog, we even have our Facebook page. But if you want to know what we’re having for lunch, or how many bathroom breaks we take each day, you’ll just have to ask.