Flog > Does tweeting make you a twit?

Posted by Mitch Flynn

Does tweeting make you a twit? Horror movie fans cherish Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" for the same reason the Taliban fears CIA drones: airborne attacks are downright scary. "Scary" also seems an apt term for the imbalance between the ubiquity of the Twitter logo (hallmark of the au courant website) and the reality of its limitations as a marketing tool. Unless you're a celebrity with a fan club (professional athlete, movie star, politician) or the organizer of a mobile device-tethered flash mob that hangs on your every pronouncement, Twitter does little but add 140 characters of noise to an already supersaturated marketing environment. Less should be more; Twitter has managed to make less less. The challenge of communication in 2020 is overcoming overcommunication. When the big black birds roost in the black walnut next door, they are murderously raucous - the message becomes the crowd, not the crow. Twitter has a place in the world - but not anywhere to the degree its hype would suggest.