Daily Marauder

SXSW: TWITTER THIS

So, let’s just rip this band-aid off shall we? I don’t use Twitter. I don’t have any interest in using Twitter. In fact, Twitter generally frustrates me.

Taking that in? YES, I know how to use it. . .I still prefer not to.

I know. Shock and awe. I started a running tally on how many times I overheard anyone using the word “twitter” in conversation during the 3 days I was at SXSW. Ending tally: 62.

If you don’t know what Twitter is, let me explain. Twitter is a form of microblogging whereby users can post short text statements such as, “Mark Cuban and Michael Eisner just posed with Flat Stanley in a photo op. Awesome.” Short. Sweet. Informative. Users can search for “tweets” on any given subject. For example, during the Mark Zuckerberg keynote (Facebook’s CEO), tweets were flying slaughtering Sarah Lacy’s interviewing style. In essence, Twitter can be used as a quick focus group on a variety of topics. For example, here are the SXSW tweets.

That said, Twitter is only useful when a majority of an audience is using it. At SXSW, most attendees use the service and therefore find it extremely useful for finding the best parties and overhearing the most useful news of the day. I get that.

What I don’t get, though, is how the service aids me outside of the new media community. My friends come from all walks of life including those adorable few who don’t have a social networking profile of any kind. In this population, Twittering party of one can be pretty lonely.

My thoughts on Twitter draw me into my overall thoughts on SXSW. It’s all about expectations. The conference does not intend to set out to impart some golden nugget of new media truth. What it does set out for is to draw the new media community together to inform each other on new ways of doing and who is doing it best. I learned how to mobile blog and argued with a new friend about Twitter for half an hour. The panels were probably the low light of my experience. This is not to say that I didn’t learn anything from those panels but for the most part, the SXSW experience is best had with a cocktail in hand being introduced to the biz dev person at Jaman while exchanging quips on the manorexic mash-up guy who looks like Justin Timberlake.

Good times.