Tweet to distraction

Anybody remember “Rico Suave”. Yeah, I do to. It is something that got overplayed, overhyped, and now it’s just embarrassing when it gets stuck in your head and you can’t get it out.

I think the world is eventually going to feel the same way about Twitter. A Sports Illustrated article today talks about how Twitter is changing sports, or at least our relationship as fans with sports stars. While they provide some compelling evidence, Twitter as the hot thing isn’t likely to keep momentum, and there are some lessons to be learned.

Twitter isn’t really sustainable from a user or a reader platform on a mass basis. A short article by Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik on Nielsen reporting that most users opt out after the first months points this out. For average people, they realize pretty quickly that letting everyone know everything that you are thinking or doing takes a lot of thinking and doing. It violates one of the basic facts of good communication which is that it has to be interesting and most of us just aren’t that interesting on a minute by minute basis. If you need further proof read my blog.

From the perspective of a fan or listener, I will admit that Twitter appears to have more usage, but not across a broad spectrum. There are a group of people that care enough to follow Stewart Cink’s every thought, but the longer that goes on the more that crowd thins to a pretty interesting few. There isn’t a profit motive for Cink and it has the making of creating a strange relationship with fans. For instance, I can’t even imagine my wife wanting hourly updates about my life let alone anyone else.

So, for those of you in communication and marketing I would say that Twitter is a potential time killer without a lot of upside. Sure it can be used for some useful things, but on an individual level the work doesn’t necessarily lead to the benefits one might hope for.