The world according to Twitter

Every place has its unique sounds. And not unlike a scar, these sounds become part of the fibre of that place. They’re the sounds without which a Place would be just another place with meandering, no-name streets.

On Monday I was reminded of Israel’s sounds and how hard they are to drown out once heard. All it took was a sound that lasted for two minutes. A sound so powerful that it brought the country to a standstill. WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Sirens are part of Israel’s sounds. If you’re here long enough you’re bound to find yourself stopping, standing and listening for two minutes as a war-like cry commemorates something or other. Monday was Yom HaShoa, Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. It’s a time when all you need to do is take a look at all the cars stopped on a usually busy highway to feel a people united in remembrance of the atrocities of the Holocaust.

At 10am the siren sounded. I stopped working. Stood at attention as though waiting a command. From my office window I saw others who did the same. I’ve seen films and many photographs which capture what life was like during the Holocaust. I’ve read about it. And have even been to one of the biggest Holocaust museums in Israel, Yad Vashem. And yet for those two minutes I couldn’t focus on any of that.

My mind was elsewhere. In Pakistan Where the battle between Secret agent Obama and another agent who goes by OBL was fought. Secret agent OBL. Could it really be? I thought as I reflected on the news. Osama bin Laden … dead. Just like that. With one final full stop. And on this day of all days. It wasn’t that I was in any way a supporter if OBL. Or that I’m sorry I missed the ground zero Osama Bash. It’s simply that those two minutes of silence weren’t enough to silence my thoughts. And it seems the Twitosphere felt the same way.

Twitter seemed to erupt with Tweets about the assassination of OBL yesterday. There was detailed, live reporting about the assassination from a citizen journalist, who goes by the handler ReallyVirtual, on Twitter. Without realizing it, ReallyVirtual live-blogged the US raid on Osama’s compound. It didn’t take long for that news to go viral. I don’t think Twitter has ever seen something like this. The number of tweets this generated within 24 hours falls just short of the total number of tweets on Japan and Kate and William’s Royal wedding.

And the statistics say it all. According to NetBase Solutions Inc., a social-media analytics company:

• There were a total of 1.2 million mentions of the Osama assassination across all social media platforms.
• The news generated over 3000 messages on Twitter per second. The highest rate of messages ever posted on the site in such a short period.

As for Yom HaShoa, well that barely made an impact online.

Perhaps it’s because Osama is part of a very recent commonly shared history. Everyone has a this-is-where-I-was-on-9/11 story. 9/11 was something the world stood by and watched with bated breath. And that’s all due to agent OBL.

But who cares about the Holocaust? It’s become something almost fictional that one learns about. Something the human mind can’t quite comprehend. Perhaps that’s it. The assassination of agent OBL is the perfectly scripted scene of a soap opera complete with the glitz and melodrama that leaves you wanting more. This is the stuff that sells newspapers and has spawned a memorabilia business.

The Holocaust, however, leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth. It’s a chunk of reality no one really wants to take a bite of. A reminder of what humans are capable of. And that’s not something anyone wants to think about for more than 2 minutes let alone Tweet about. How can one make sense of 6 million lives lost? And so we turn our mind to other things.

I remember the first time I was told a Holocaust joke and how unimpressed I was. But you’re a Jew, I thought. I was shocked. I now understand. There are some things the human mind can’t fully comprehend. And so Holocaust jokes and stories like those about the fall of agent OBL are far more appealing and easier to digest. And that is why they create such a stir on Twitter.

Twitter and other citizen media platforms are therefore not always a reflection of what’s meaningful. But they do give us interesting insight into the issues that make people tick. These are powerful tools which serve as barometers and indicators of what is important to a majority. This is the world according to Twitter.

And for a while I sat in amused silence. In mild shock. And processed this. I had given my friend two options : Oprah or the school girl from Afghanistan maimed with acid for wanting an education. “Whose daily musings would you be most interested in?” I asked. Oprah? This made no sense to me. Oprah?  After all, what value and insight could a celebratory, who is bound to see a microblogging service like Twitter as a free PR, image-bolstering channel, add? That’s what I was trying to understand. And while may friend explained, nothing she said was compelling enough to help me reach that level of tinsel-town enlightenment where Oprah has a God-like glow and I decide to follow her on Twitter.

But just because I wasn’t budging that doesn’t mean the rest of the twitosphere felt the same. After only a day on Twitter Oprah has a following of 248,630 people and counting. And in true Oprah style her first tweet was sent live on her TV show with the help of another Twitter celebratory whose name has been dominating the Twitosphere: Ashton Kutcher.

See Kutcher was the winner of the recent Twitter race to one million Twitter followers which had been raging between him and the news organisation CNN. As part of this publicity stunt, Kutcher promised to donate 10 000 mosquito nets to a charity for World Malaria day if he won and 1000 if he lost. Not a bad deal. But it doesn’t stop there; Oprah and CNN now also plan to donate to this cause. So what are all the Twitter veterans and those few dissenters moaning about?

Kutcher is now the King of Twitter. And Oprah is fast become the queen. It didn’t take long for these celebrities to not only become the most popular Twitter users but to dominate conversation in the twitosphere. And that’s where part of the problem comes in. I think some veteran Twits may have bruised egos for these celebrities didn’t have to work too hard for their Twitter success. But they miss the point.  Since these celebrities made their presence known on Twitter that has come to dominate many tweets. Twitter was meant to be a space free and separate from mainstream media. Instead now the twitosphere has become a space for more celebrity worship and gossip to thrive. How exciting.

Kutcher tried to make his Twitter victory seem like a victory of the individual against mainstream media. He talked about democratisation of media and how instrumental Twitter is in this process. Nice try Kutcher but you can’t play that card. This is Ashton Kutcher and Oprah we’re talking about after all. No average Joe, no matter how interesting, could rival their fan bases. Also Ashton had a well-established offline fan following and the help of 1,133 digital billboards. You can’t beat that!

Twitter was meant to be an open space where people built a reputation based on the quality if their tweets. Now the rules have changed. And we can thank Oprah and Ashton for that. It’s now a type of popularity contest where everyone hopes to be retweeted by a celebrity. Because if that happens you can lie back and know you’ve made it. Ignore content. And quality. Ignore those voices that Twitter was meant to help bring to the fore. This is now a playground for the big kids and unless you are one of them you have very little chance of influencing the news agenda.

Yes anyone can set up a Twitter account. Tweet. And share their daily life, thoughts and experiences with the world. But this isn’t true citizen media. The same rules still apply. The few influencing the many. That’s how mainstream media works, remember?  So go ahead … tweet away. Maybe someone somewhere will care. But for now, brace yourself for many retweets as these celebrities make themselves at home.

I could never claim to be a twitter-box (a twitter chatterbox) or twitter-lebratory. I don’t have hoards of followers who hang on my every word, retweeting as they see fit. And I doubt any of my carefully crafted 140-character tweets have been turned into mantras. No, I’m certainly not one of those A list twitter-users (twits?) with a behind the scenes ghost-writer or a VIP seat at every tweet-up. But there is a part of the twitosphere that is filled with my tweets. And for me that is enough. Sometimes it’s nothing of particular interest to anyone. It’s just something I want to get off my chest or show people. And so I do.

So as far as twits go, I’m the new girl on the block. And yet, twitter has had an impact on my life. I don’t mean in the sense that I feel the need to unleash a daily torrent of tweets describing my breakfast and how I really need to get a haircut or some sleep. I’m a relatively disciplined twit who only has the occasional emotional tweet-splurge.

My Twitter moment is quite simple. It involves another twit, @nivcalderon. Now he belongs to the ranks of the retweetable twits. I guess you could call him one of the Twitter grandmasters. He and I met through Twitter at a time when I was thinking of moving to Israel. He proved to be the perfect sounding board: an Israeli with knowledge of Israeli media, something I would give my eyeteeth to be a part of.

A year later, I did move to Israel and Niv and I met in person. Still preoccupied and perhaps a little obsessed with getting a job in Israeli media, I explained to him how I’d had very little success doing so. And he listened. He made a few suggestions. And then offered to help. That’s when I had my Twitter moment.

See he used Twitter as a space to introduce me to his followers. Sent out 2 tweets: tweet 1 and tweet 2. He also uploaded a picture of me to twitpic. Within seconds of doing so I had at least 5 new people following me on Twitter. One of his followers started following me simply because I was a friend of his. You can’t ignore the power of Twitter, if you know how use it that is. And ok I didn’t get a job out of that Twitter experiment but I made some contacts that may come in handy.

These Twitter moments are certainly not unique to me though. Recently a California woman admitted via Twitter that she planned to commit suicide. Demi Moore picked up on this cry for help and retweeted the message to her many fan-followers. Because of Twitter, the suicide attempt was stopped. There is also the case of the journalist, James Earl Buck, who was arrested in Egypt while covering an anti-government protest. And with one simple tweet he was able to inform family, friends and all his follows of his predicament. Arrested – that’s all his tweet said. He was able to use this tweet to get in touch with that network of people and secure his freedom.

And then there are the recent protests in Moldova which are being flagged as the first Twitter revolution. The protests were in response to election results which many believed were rigged. Online social media applications, like Twitter, played a role in organising these protests. Moldovan-based Twitter users started using the tag (hashtag) #pman, which stands for Piata Marii Adunari Nationale, Chisinau’s central square in their messages. This was their cryptic way of organising a meeting place for the protesters. There were at least 10 000 protestors who showed up. Because of Twitter, you’re probably wondering?

There are some things that you need to consider. And maybe they’ll convince you that the hype around this Moldovan Twitter Revolution is just that … hype. For example , there are only 70 Twitter users who specify their location as Moldova. Some are suggesting that this ‘revolution’ was actually organised remotely by Moldovans abroad. Some also suggest that too much credit is given to Twitter as the mobilizing tool for the Chisinau central square is a natural place for people to gather and given the tense political climate Moldovans would need little incentive to join a protest.

So perhaps it wasn’t solely a Twitter-orchestrated revolution. But you can’t ignore the role played by Twitter. The organisers, regardless of where they were, did a good job flooding the twitosphere with tweets related to the protest giving it more coverage. Twitter also allowed for decentralized protests where you didn’t have to be in Moldova to play some role and make your voice heard.

On the level of both the personal and the political twitter is causing reverberations that extend behind the twitosphere. The interesting thing is that these reverberations are having an impact offline. And people are turning to what has been mocked as a blogging application for those with too much time and too few friends to affect change. To me, twitter revolutions are happening every day. Maybe not in as dramatic a form as the Moldovan flash mob. But I just think of the daily triumphs and achievements like the suicide which Twitter helped prevent … and well to me that’s a type of revolution. One in which the average person is given a front row seat to their world. No more passive consumption of media. Now you; me; everyone can have a say and play more of an active role in society. The biggest mistake you can make is to see Twitter as geek-hype. If nothing else, that’s a lesson we should all take away from Moldova.