tell me something….
I was on the Curtis Sliwa show on ABC Talkradio last night.
The topic was Twitter and Iran.
Of course, it’s easy and self-evident to say that web based programs like Twitter are driving part of the revolt in Iran. But then Curtis asked me, ‘what happens when the Mullahs get hold of Twitter and flood the blogosphere with their own propaganda’.
It was a good question, but I didn’t have an answer… until now.
The Mullahs won’t get hold of twitter. They won’t do it because those who are in power, for whatever reason, rarely if ever embrace new technologies. I don’t know why.
This point was driven home to me yesterday when I got a tweet from Al Gore.
I have been following Al for some time, but it occurred to me that he rarely, if ever, tweets.
The tweet I got from Al Gore said to congratulate him on breaking 1 million followers. He has, in fact, 1,010,650 as of today.
That is a lot of followers.
But the more astonishing number was that since he joined Twitter, Al has posted a grand total of 41 times.
(And one of these to say, ‘help push me over a million’, and another to say, ‘I made it past 1 million).
Now, maybe the guy is just fixated on number of followers, like votes, but it seems to me that he isn’t really using this very powerful tool for much.
The reason is, he doesn’t need it.
He has always had access to the levers of power.
If he wants to get his ideas across to the public, he calls a press conference and before you know it, he is on Meet The Press or NBC Nightly News.
That’s a neat trick that the rest of us just can’t pull off.
Likewise with the Mullahs. Likewise with anyone in power.
They can’t help it. It’s a way of life for them – easy access to the media.
So while they might find social networks interesting (and Al Gore is no dope. He was a very early adapter of Blackberry), he simply never uses Twitter – except to see how many people are listeing to him (and ironically, he has nothing to say to them).
Social media are not for, and will never be properly used by, the government or those in positions of power.
The can’t understand it because they don’t have to.
Many years ago I tried to take Hillary Clinton’s campaign for President down the road of viral video.
Youtube had just gotten going, and remarkably, Hillary and her whole very well paid and very smart media team had not even heard of Youtube.
But slowly, over time, they came to understand that it might be good to put a kind of spontaneous video up on their website.
So one day, they called me and said (with great excitement), ‘we took your advice’ (not that I ever got paid), ‘we’re doing viral video. With small hand held cameras!’.
So I went to the site, and I saw that they had sat Hillary on a well lit couch with books behind her and dressed her in pearls and she very stiffly looked into the camera and answered some canned and pre-selected questions that ‘we received by email!). It was like Good Morning America. It looked like Good Morning America, only worse.. if that is possible.
And I realized that she was never going to ‘get’ viral video.
Today I realized that Al Gore is never going to get Twitter.
Sorry Curtis.
That’s what happens when we do the show at 12:30 am.
1 Comment
Elletra June 18, 2009
Also Michael, another thing about these social networking sites is that they are just that, social. They are not meant to be the podium that they have become. I think if proper potical advocates utilize these mediums in such a way as everyone else does, it takes away the prestige, the seriousness of what they are advocating. It’s one thing if a they have nonchalant, infrequent updates on twitter, but if an elected official tweets their platform, it’s almost as if you should question why they have time to twitter about. Ultimately I’m glad Al doesn’t frequently tweet, and that Hillary doesn’t get viral, let their aides do it for them, and let them work.