Tweet Tweet

Tweet, tweet. What’s that, a cute baby chick?

Nope, it’s just the network of friends, coworkers, reporters, gadflys and major corporations pounding down the virtual wall of my computer. Every minute of every hour of every day.

I was a Twitter holdout for a long time. I didn’t see its value and it seemed like one more thing to steal away my time and attention. I finally caved in March when a professor told us we could pick up extra credit by tweeting articles related to our course materials. Extra credit – it’s my kryptonite. I went home that day and joined Twitter as fast as I could. Thank goodness I did because without those two extra points, I’m sure my A would have … still been an A (OK, not the point ).

I am five months into my Twitter experience and I have to say I dislike it even more now than I did before. Seriously – the site is user-unfriendly, unorganized and I’m constantly stuck looking at that stupid whale.

All that said, I still created an account – twitter.com/TheCityMaven – for the project when I started putting together the website and a web presence. I see Twitter as a tip sheet. It’s a way to grab headlines and news updates. Plus, it’s important to keep an eye on the tweets of politicians, department heads and press deputies. If you don’t, there’s the danger of missing gems like this:

Last quarter I took a class called Building Networked Audiences, and one of the areas of study was social media. It wasn't content that we focused on but rather the physical and electronic structures of networks. One site that does this is Klout. It measures Twitter influence based on:

1. True Reach
2. Amplification Probability
3. Network Influence

True Reach is the size of the “engaged audience,” meaning the number of followers minus spammers and inactive accounts. Amplification Probability considers the diversity of the audience, the likelihood that a person’s tweet will be retweeted, and the effectiveness in generating new followers, retweets and @ replies. Network Influence, finally, is the influence level of the engaged audience.

Klout provides an even more detailed explanation on its website but you get the idea.

I looked up Klout scores for a couple of LA media outlets. On a scale of 1 to 100, LAist has a 65. NBC4 has a 31. LATimes has a 78. LAObserved has a 46.

These numbers leave me with some questions: what is the true “influence” that these sites have? I understand within the context of Twitter, but what about within the context of something that actually matters? Do the people behind these accounts actually have clout when they need to get ahold of an elected official? Do they have the ability to set news agendas?

Twitter has critical mass on its side, for now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it shows itself to be an important tool for marketers. Maybe it will continue to be a tip sheet for reporters (and a place where anonymous strangers hilariously impersonate famous dudes) but I don’t see the staying power. The problem with 140 characters is the same problem with the useless ticker streaming on cable news stations – it trains us to believe we’ve been told the most important piece of information and anything else would be ancillary. Can't we all agree by this point that if a public person's statement includes 2, U, @, ;) , reload, or patently false and misleading facts, then there's more to the story?