Has Twitter “suddenly exploded”? And if so, what does it mean? This story in PR Week UK says it has; as for what it means, that’s less clear. But what matters more – the number of tweets per day a person tweets? the number of followers a person has (I only have 18 as of now; my colleague Steve Rubel has more than 18,000!)? or is it WHAT you actually tweet, uhm, you know, the content? One so-called expert PR Week quoted said “Fake Twitters don’t work.” I have no freakin’ idea what that means. Do you? (Help me catch up to Steve – follow me at SantowDan.)
The PR Week piece has gotten attention in the blogosphere. From sceptredyouth: “The biggest question is - how can what is essentially a big d*ck contest come off this impotent?” From The Register: “Writing about Twitter is the journalistic equivalent of eating the fluff from your navel. The posh papers love it. Menopausal middle-aged hacks love it. The BBC is obsessed with it ….The rest of the world, however, completely ignores it.”
Gail Collins in today’s New York Times on the evolution of product placements: “Lines we never even bothered to think of as lines are being crossed. Last summer in Las Vegas, the anchors on the local Fox station started delivering the news with two prominently placed cups of McDonald’s iced coffee in front of them. … It’s only a matter of time before TV reporters conclude interviews with disaster victims by asking if they wouldn’t like a refreshing glass of V-8.”