Twitter may have just an eighth of the users Facebook does, but it continues to generate buzz like no other web service right now. Twitter is a media darling, and the latest groupie to embrace the micro blogging platform is US news show Nightline. It’s just announced a new online TV show, NightTLine (sic), which will see guests fielding questions sent in by Twitter.
I’m intrigued to see if this will work, but I don’t have high hopes. Twitter is a staggeringly useful tool, but not a useful platform for thoughtful political discussion, limited as you are to 140 character grunts. That aside though, the immediacy and anonymity that Twitter can provide has led to some unfortunate mishaps when traditional media players have tried harnessing it beyond a way to deliver content quickly.
Two instances spring to mind. The Skittles fiasco, where the sweet’s homepage was replaced with a Twitter stream of tweets about Skittles by foolish marketing folk, and The Telegraph’s recent budget announcement Twitter stream. In both cases, the internet being the internet, people found out, and began tweeting swear words so they would appear, unedited, on these respectable websites.
What the producers of NightTline should take from these experiments is just how they try to use social media tools. If anything, companies and content creators throw the baby out with the bath water when using them, forgetting to employ some of the techniques that got them where they were before the age of the internet: editing and moderation. My own opinion is that not only can you marry social media with these traditional skills (lt’s what we do here at Republic, as James pointed out last week), if you’re going to use social media as an organisation or business, it’s vital you do.
Here’s another example of what could go wrong if you don’t. Earlier this year, the website of a local Brighton newspaper, The Argus, snagged an interview with David Cameron, and asked readers to post their questions to him in the comments of the post. The paper failed to notice the potential for anonymous blue bashing, and within minutes most of the suggestions revolved around the leader of the opposition’s lack of facial hair – all the comments have sadly since been removed.
Social media is a wonderful, open and democratic platform for communication, but judicious control is required, just like always, to stop it becoming a free for all. If NightTline is to succeed – as I’d like it to – it needs to recognise this, otherwise the questions guest will be fielding will be just as puerile. And that won’t be funny for very long.
OK, maybe it will be a little.