Twitter chats. If I hear one more parrot I'm going to scream.
I participate in a few twitter chats surrounding social media (and a few other topics). For the most part they’ve been useful for opening a dialog, for finding a few nuggets of wisdom, etc. but lately I’m becoming more and more disillusioned with them. As the quote mistakenly attributed to Shakespeare would say, “Let me count the ways…”
1. Regardless of the host, the question being asked, or even the topline subject of the chat, the conversation inevitably devolves away to whatever the last chat topic was. Why? Because that is what a lot of the attendees feel educated on enough to regurgitate. The notion of actually prepping beforehand by seeing what the upcoming questions are, the hosts view on that topic, and what (if anything) you have to add to that discussion appears to be virtually nonexistent in many of these chats.
2. There are a group of people who attend every chat, on every topic, even superficially related to social media….and proceed to say the same things in every one of them.
3. There is a great deal of whatever the latest buzzwords are being thrown around, without a lot context or practical application to the point at hand. “Be human”, “Be transparent”, “Listen”, “Look before leaping”, “Have a strategy”, “Define the ROI”, “ROI doesn’t matter”, ….. I could go on and on. But these quick snippets don’t solve complex problems. There is a great deal of company bashing going on, or anti-company viewpoints to attempt to either look smarter than the company or to look like you are “customer-centric” (another buzzword). I’d love to cut and paste from a lot of these chat transcripts and show you exactly what I mean in a very explicit way, but have no desire to embarrass anyone.
4. The signal to noise ratio is becoming difficult to bear. I’d almost prefer to be “talked to” at this point with a sidebar chat taking place like traditional web chats than try and have a meaningful dialog in some of the current twitter chats.
5. The main driving factor to all of the above is that these chats have become more a way for people to network vs. learn & debate. That dictates saying something so that you’re seen, making it seem like it’s an intelligent statement, etc. I’m all for the networking aspect, but not at the expense of the dialog quality.
6. I’ve found myself doing a few of the above items myself, and I’m not cool with that. It won’t be long before the format of these chats will need to change, the kum ba ya ideals of “everyone has a voice” will inevitably fall to filtering and moderation of some kind. It must, it’s a necessary evil of scaling for capacity, get used to it.
Gotta run, Polly wants a cracker. But feel free to let loose with both barrels in the comments below.
Matt Ridings - @techguerilla
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