Don't blame me for creating stories on Twitter, says Stephen Fry

Don't blame me for creating stories on Twitter, says Stephen Fry

Posted by
Mercedes Bunz Tuesday 17 November 2009 11.23 GMT
guardian.co.uk

The millions of Twitter users make stories - I only point them in a direction, says Stephen Fry in speech to conference


Stephen Fry, speaking today at the 140 Characters Conference in London, said:

"There is a power of Twitter. We can't deny it any more, well for sure not as a celebrity Twitterer. A year ago, nearly no one heard about Twitter. But things move so fast today - and the bewilderment, content, disbelief with which Twitter was greeted ...

They called it the most banal and pointless waste of time. And do you know what they say now? Now they say: Our Twitter strategy is ...

It is a very odd thing when people think they are being smart when they speak not as humans but as business people. They say, I need a phone that does this, I need a social network that does that. You know what? I know a lot of executives that lead big companies, and they talk about what excites them and what convinces them. They are driven as human beings.

And you know what? Before humans are reasoning, they are emotional beings. With gadgets you communicate with other people, and therefore this is an emotional internet that you have. Not just plain function. It will come as no surprise that as the next big thing it wasn't designed as business for business. Twitter was created to babble to each other. Remember it was called Twitter and not serious debate or marketing tool.

It is important for all of us to understand its nature. It is human shaped, not business shaped. And the swell will move elsewhere if you try to make it all neat and attractive. The greatness and the magnitude of its energy will all move.

Think of Twitter or the internet like the invention of the printing press. 1450 - when there were no printed books and about 500 years later there were 20m. The press became available for a great number of people. There was a new freedom of the press. This caused upheavals. Huge numbers of magazines, broadsheets and pamphlets were published. And the most popular ones were not called "the Debate". They were called the Idler or the Spectator.

There was no class more contemptuous of Twitter than the commentating journalists. Why should we care about what Britney Spears had for breakfast, they said. So may I ask you, why do you write about it in the paper? The journalists said, who needs this Twitter thing and in the next moment you read: Follow the Daily Mail on Twitter at ...

But like with the printing press, Twitter changed the situation. People like me, Twillionaires [people with more than a million followers], we can cut out the press from our PR requirements. It used to be a pact with the devil. You wanted to inform the press about a new film and they said they will interview you, but only if they are allowed to ask you around other themes about your private life. Today, Britney Spears tells her PR manager, why should I care about that this journalist of this newspaper with big circulations, I will reach this circulation just by typing into my keyboard.

So well, whole newspapers are on the one side filled with resentment against Twitter, on the other side they are using it and searching Twitter messages. By the way, have you recognised, they are using it as a feed, the deadwood press doesn't say stream. Puzzling.

Then there are good moments. There was the case of Trafigura, which forbade the Guardian to write about it. It caused a storm on Twitter, which I joined in quite late as that morning I came from the gym - it is pathetic, I can't believe I said that but it is true, and the thing reached such a heat by 1pm or 2pm that the lawyers had to do something about it. This can be considered a victory.

Or a journalist from the Daily Mail wrote about something very awful which happened to affect a friend of mine, although I don't make a big deal about that fact. But I saw this brilliant answer from Charlie Brooker and so commented and pointed there. And then they said, 'Who the hell does Stephen Fry think he is forbidding this journalist to think freely?' Well I never did.

But because of the weight of my numbers I am now credited or blamed for inventing these stories. But this is not the way Twitter works. The Twitter millions create the story. You can only point them in a direction. It is like with your parents, when you come home and say you did this because a friend told you and they go like: well if he told you to stick your head in the fire, would you do that?

Twitter is about participating - by which I mean you tweet and read other people's tweets. Then you understand it, and get its rhythm. But remember: It is about being authentic. These things are human-shaped."

Fry is afraid that Twitter will be swamped by PR professionals. What do you think?

I Wish I Knew Who You Were, And Who You Worked For (Automatically)

Article on Twittercism

Lots of people have multiple accounts on Twitter, for various reasons. I can’t tell you the number of times I get a message from somebody out of the blue and I’ll think, “Hey, I know you, don’t I?”

But who is it?

Some detective work later, I figure out that the reason I know this person is because I’m following one of their other accounts. Perhaps their business account. Maybe their personal one. What bugs me about this is I might have a friendly relationship with this person on one of their accounts, but have no idea who they are on another. Or even that they have another.

What I’d like Twitter to offer (and this would be entirely opt-in) is a way for multiple accounts to be linked together. This would be great for businesses that have main accounts and lots of additional ones for their staff. Like Twitter themselves, for example. When you visit the Twitter profile, all their employees should be right there, too. With titles and responsibilities. And if I stumble across an individual employee, it shows that they’re linked to Twitter.

(Think Twitter + LinkedIn.)

Some people do this now in their bios, but it’s kinda awkward, and doesn’t translate well into manageable data.

It could even work a bit like a newsfeed, with one main account pulling the updates from everybody else. So, if I wanted to really follow Google, for example, an @GoogleTeam user could be setup so that everybody who worked for the company could be followed via that one account. The different users would feed in and I could reply to them accordingly.



(Think Twitter + RSS.)

And it wouldn’t have to stop at businesses. Participants in sports teams could link together, as well as social groups and other clubs. You could start your own tribe.

(It might even come with privacy. You could direct message everybody in your tribe with one click. Wouldn’t that be convenient?)

As it is, it’s awkward to find out all the people that work for any corporation on Twitter. I’ve been trying to do this for Twitter themselves, and Dave Winer is doing some great work with his 100twt project. (Check out what the people who work for the New York Times are saying.)

I’d like to see it automated. I think it benefits businesses and customers, which is rare enough to make it very worthwhile.

Read this and more at Twittercism

State of the Twittersphere June 2009

Hubspot have compiled an interesting factfile using data on 4.5 million users they have collected from Twitter Grader.

For instance:

• 79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL
• 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
• 68.68% have not specified a location
• 55.50% are not following anyone
• 54.88% have never tweeted
• 52.71% have no followers

• The average user tweets .97 times per day
• The average user has tweeted 119.34 times in total
• The average user has a following-to-follower ratio of .7738

Some interesting Statistics on Tweets

users are frequently using Twitter to interact and communicate with other users rather than just answer the “What are you doing?” question.

• 1.44% of all tweets are retweets

• 37.95% of all tweets contain an “@” symbol (mentions)

• 33.44% of all tweets start with an “@” symbol (replies)

Many users are reaching the 140-character limit in an attempt to get as much content as possible into every update.

The report can be found at the hubspot website

Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts

Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts - :
Good article on Cio website informing Twitter beginners of the basic rules of etiquette for the service,

like any social network, the Twitter community has its own set of unwritten guidelines — or etiquette — that dictates good (or bad) behavior on the service. Some people call it Twittequette. So before you stick a foot measuring 140-characters-or-less in your mouth, check out their advice on how to follow and un-follow, share politely, direct message appropriately, and more"

Twitter Etiquette: Five Dos and Don'ts - :

Clicks for tricks: Twitter's first brothel?

House of Divine in glamorous Milton Keynes tweeted to say that Lucia and Karol were working on Sunday while another message offered a "Twitter Discount". The operation has been exposed in The Sun newspaper, which trumpets: "A BROTHEL is touting its services via social networking site TWITTER

Article at The Guardian

The rise and rise of Twitter | Technology | guardian.co.uk

"In November 2008 a total of 40 articles appeared in British local and national newspapers that included the word 'Twitter'. Though a quarter of them were published by the Guardian, this paper's technology correspondent nonetheless found himself explaining to general readers that 'Twitter, a mobile social network, has generated lots of buzz'. The Daily Telegraph, quaintly, was still using the word to describe a way of talking.
The following month, 85 articles appeared on the subject. By January 2009, it was 206. But those were still the dark ages. Hot on the heels of the Twitter plane crash came the site's first live action celebrity lift catastrophe, when the actor Stephen Fry, a tweeter so prolific that one hopes he still eats, offered breathless updates from the stationary elevator in which he briefly found himself marooned. (His followers total is now 350,000)."

Article at guardian.co.uk

The rise of the twittering classes

The rise of the twittering classes is something that has received a wide amount of publicity in the British press this week. Stephen Fry used Twitter to tell his followers (OVER 100000 of them) that he was stuck in a lift at Centrepoint in London. Reports appeared the next day in most of the daily newspapers more notably The Guardian The Telegraph and The Independent

Johnathan Ross delighted his Twitter followers at the BAFTA awards by working in the word salad as part of his performance. The Guardian's live Baftas blog,suggests the crossover between 'Bafta nominee/buddy/ligger' and 'Twitterer' is not particularly big, and possibly non-existent. Twitter fans at home, meanwhile, were simultaneously jumping up and down on the sofa yelling 'He said salad! He said salad!' to the bemusement of all around them"

Facebook at five: The toughest challenge is yet to come - Telegraph

How long before the popularity of Facebook fades? An article in the Telegraph, comments on the future of Facebook: Facebook at five: The toughest challenge is yet to come - Telegraph: "For many internet users, especially youngsters, having a Facebook account is as important as having a mobile phone. Social events are organised through Facebook's pages, and it is used by millions to share photos and videos.
However, the next five years look a lot tougher for Facebook. The honeymoon period is well and truly over, and there is anecdotal evidence, at least, that 'Facebook fatigue' is setting in with some users. The greatest difficulty the website faces is 'user stickiness' – remaining sufficiently dynamic, interesting and relevant to retain its members"

Are government ministers allowed to poke, tweet and use social media? | Technology | The Guardian

An article in The Guardian: asks : Are government ministers allowed to poke, tweet and use social media? "This week, the government's Power of Information taskforce set out a list of 25 urgent actions for the public sector machine - from Downing Street to local councils and NHS organisations - to take to embrace social networking, blogging and other such phenomena."