Twitter's Influence on Real-World Forums

Last night in St Paul, Minnesota, a group of local bloggers and members of the mainstream media got together to discuss ethics in new media.

The event (considering it was in Minnesota on a Monday night) was heavily covered online with a 3000+ word live-blogging effort, a live stream, and plenty of Twitter users. That was during the event. Additionally, quite a few local blogs (including this one now) covered it after the fact.

In looking through the plethora of coverage, I noticed two comments regarding Twitter behavior that stood out to me.

1. Some non-Twitter users (or at least Twitter engaged at the time users) seem to find it rude that a fairly active side-conversation was taking place within the room over laptops and cell phones. In fact, that conversation included people who were connected via Twitter but not physically in attendance. Bob Collins from Minnesota Public Radio reflected on news NewsCuts blog, saying, "Twitter seems like digital spitballs to me."
2. Collins also seems to believe that the Twitter crowd could have done a better job engaging in the real-world conversation rather than Twittering their ongoing commentaries. He seemed frustrated by this, writing in the comments thread of his blog, "The honesty that people were able to muster up while punching messages on their cellphones to twitter, or by live blogging, they were not for some reason able to muster up in face-to-face communication."

Based on the hundreds of comments that have been posted about the event, I see this as a simple clash of cultures. The Twitter users were simply doing what they do all day long every day through their blogs, Facebook status, IM messages and IM status, and - from time to time - in the real world. Suddenly, the topic of conversation turned to, obviously, the topic at hand.

More than anything else, Twitter brings efficiency to conversations in large crowds. I don't know the attendance figure for the forum, so let's just assume it was 50 people. Clearly, 50 people cannot all ask even one question each in a public forum lasting 90 minutes, much less receive thoughtful responses from others. But 50 people could each share their thoughts as they happen with whomever finds them important (subscribes to their Tweets or Tweets on a topic) and receive real-time responses from people they find interesting.

I'm sure many of the non-Twitter using mainstream media members in attendance leaned over to whomever they happened to be sitting next to and shared a spontaneous thought or two during the event. That's great, but it's constricted to the handful of people you happened to sit down next to who may or may not be interested in hearing your take at that exact moment. Scaling your thoughts beyond whisper range makes things much more interesting.

Another factor is public speaking. Public speaking is consistently one of the highest rates fears people have. Twitter allows people to send thoughtful, concise, messages to interested parties without having to stand in front of a crowd with a microphone in hand. This is one of the things that makes back channels (even public back channels like Twitter) so valuable.

I believe a great balance can be found by having someone other than the moderator monitor the Twitterverse for relevant comments and bringing them to the attention of the moderator for further discussion. There is a good chance you'll find a few ideas that are more valuable than what you'll get from someone with a microphone who likes hearing himself talk a bit too much. And it avoids Twitter overload of moderators.

In the context of the forum, what would constitute a valuable Twitter contribution? From what I understand, overall there wasn't a LOT of Twitter activity.

As I said, Jon Gordon has been trying to get me to use Twitter, and I linked to Jeff Jarvis' post on the subject. But what would it look like -- this idea of projecting it on the wall at the same time?

I'm guessing that a guy in the third row wouldn't twitter "this sucks, I wish I weren't here."

I see it on a philosophical level, of course. I'm not sure I see it at a practical level and last night would've been a good time to consider it.

As far as seeming to think the crowd could've done a better job, I've tried to be clear on this. I failed, the guest failed, the site failed, the topic failed. I'm not shifting blame. Just theorizing that in matters of personal human communication, a willingness to communicate despite any discomfort is a requisite.

This, itself, may be a cultural thing that plays out better on, say, the East Coast.

I get the whole "technology as an enhancer of human communication." What I feel from last night is it acted as a substitute for it.

I was thinking of attending and now I think I'll wait for the real event to discuss this that must happen now.

My thoughts are that this was a fabulous, and painful, learning experience, just as Ed's link to last fall's conference was.
--Tweets, like blog comments, need moderation to be used in a formal setting. Informal, who cares if someone spams or snarks you on a Tweek; formal, it is needlessly distracting.
--Moderation is always a challenge, I've seen compliments on Bob's effort, while Bob himself above feels like a failure; suppose it is the nature of that job.
--Clash of cultures is very understandable, but that is the environment CHOSEN for this topic. So the entire planning of the forum should have tried to anticipate the impact of the blogger and the MSM / journalist...not just their viewpoints, but their tools, tactics, and whole WORLD they come from. Understandably difficult, but look at the great learnings these blogs are presenting from the first 90 minutes of effort. There is a future here for MPR or someone bold enough to schedule Ethics In The Digital Age - Round Two.
--Leading me to the next, most critical aspect to the success of this forum--would be to more closely define the topic and goal. It seems while the topic was general and the guest fitting to that topic, what evolved was more specific to local blogging where the national guest did not match the hopes and goal carried by the audience. Everyone who has ever run a blog and MSM has learned that they can't run a free-for-all, one-size-fits-all operation.

That is why so both MSM and bloggers have multiple outlets, one more business/mainstream and one more open to taking risks. Isn't this irony delicious?

ryanol, I believe some conferences have done live streams of Tweets. However, I don't think that's doing to be the right answer for serious discussions.

Bob, I think having a well Twitter-connected co-host who can keep an eye on Tweets would work very well. They could cull out a few comments from the crowd, and I think the crowd would provide some great comments and questions if they knew they would be used. I see this as a better alternative to taking questions ahead of time since they may not end up being particularly relevant to the discussion that forms.

I was at a conference yesterday where 80 people in the room were on Twitter making comments and having live conversations about the conference. Let's face it, Twitter and similar vehicles are often - but not always - for people who don't have the guts to say things out loud. For instance, one person Twittered "Did anyone notice the yellow theme in the afternoon snacks?". Kind of amusing? Yes. Relevant to the conversation? No. Distracting? Absolutely.

We have access to wonderful tools and technology that enable us to better communicate and keep connected. Sadly, I'm not sure all the conversations and participants are worth listening to.

One of the complaints last night was that the discussion was filtered through two people at the front of the room. In the suggested Twitter model, and I'm not dismissing it - I'm trying to understand it -- that would exacerbate the problem, wouldn't it?

I find it laughable I keep hearing this theme that us audience members live-blogging and Twittering didn't have the "guts" or "courage" to say comments out loud.

There was 80 people there, one mic and anytime a commenter pushed the MSM status quo, Dan Gillmore changed the subject or droned on for 10 minutes.

Despite the awkward format, I know Erica, Garrick and I all three made comments that were largely ignored. No surprise our comments (and frustration) found their way to a medium with a receptive audience.

You know, I hear all the time that the great thing about blogs -- and here we are talking about standard and ethics again -- is that when someone is wrong on a blog, other bloggers will step into correct him/her.

So should I just wait here until someone points out to Greg that *I* never said anything about he live bloggers didn't have the guts or the courage. And I'm more than willing to see the citation that I did.

I said there was a reluctance to as several of you-- David Brauer, Jason, and others have acknowledged. You felt overwhelmed by the formality, or the staid nature of the room, or the two boring guys at the front of the room, etc. Those, to me, are all valid points.

What I concluded though is that there was a fundamental difference in focus by those in the room. MSM was focused on the conversation. Bloggers were focused on the conversation ABOUT the conversation. That is neither good, nor bad. That was my takeaway and I think it's worth exploring as we look at the differences and similarities.

I did say that there was a dishonesty involved, but only to the extent that one would live blog that the event sucked and then tell me on the way out the door that "this was great." I don't know how to square that.

I acknowledge that the event was lacking. But I dispute that people were ignored. On the one hand, people can't say they don't want two people in the front of the room to filter the conversation... and as we said we wanted it to be a discussion involving all of us. I asked many, many times, for people to disagree with others and verbalize that.

So let's recap. You didn't want us to be the two guys that had to speak to everything and you felt we ignored you. I understand your complaint but if the idea was that it shouldn't have been just me and Dan... when you made your comments, who ELSE would you have wanted to hear from besides me and Dan?

Additionally, as I recall -- and I may have your identity incorrect -- one of your comments was actually a reaction to something *I* said.

I have spent much of the day today trying to explain where I'm coming from and I do that because I very much respect you and everyone else who attended. I'd like to catch a bit of a break and perhaps even a slight benefit of the doubt as we move forward so we can actually have a dialogue that accomplishes something.

There's plenty to beat me over the head for and I would very much respectfully request if we're going to do that, that we concentrate on those things I did say, rather than a version of something I didn't.

**G: I just gave the example of Bob making a comment on our blog, it being updated immediately, and how MSM could never have reprinted, redelivered, etc. vs. not having an editor. Nobody picked up my question on at what point is it okay to relax quality standards for timeliness?

>> I can't speak for the others who didn't want to share their opinion on this, but I actually did address this when I talked about the the "incremental" nature of developing stories and storylines. And Dan followed up with something about deadlines that I didn't follow. But *my* answer is that it's always OK, but more so on errors of ommission. Inadvertently pointing out that someone is a baby killer and psychotic because you just wanted to get something up quick I would have a problem with because that falls into the "I'm just sayin'" method, which I always talked about.

You also typed:
>>Bob: Is it reasonable to expect traditional media to have the same standards as new media? And are there areas that have become de facto standards online that should be migrating to traditional media?

>>DG answers questions so slowly. I can't believe the invited forum guests are only allowed to ask Dan questions. I wanted to see people ask each other questions, share ideas, etc. etc.

//E: Garrick Van Buren asks: "Is a 30 second sound bite journalism? TPM didn't win the Polk award for 30-second soundbites." Also, "We need to liven things up here."

//G: Oh Garrick, God Bless You! BC and DG are acting like they don't know what he means by 30 second segments given to cover the news, which makes me nervous.

Perhaps you missed it (and this was the part I mistakenly attributed to you upstream), but Garrick was actually referencing a comment I'd made regarding the stenography nature of MSM and the acceptance of a 30 second site bite to fit a MSM template.

//G: I just laughed out loud that people assume if stuff ran on blogs DeRusha knows about it.

//The problem is that people don't understand how blogs are consumed. Especially how blogs are consumed by people who blog. Bloggers go through a different process of reputation-building, sourcing, and vetting than MSM does. Just because you read something on a blog doesn't make it news. Reading MSM is for lazy people.

//G: DG is talking about "combining human and machine intelligence to find things that are much more likely to be trustworthy about things we care about." Comparing digg.com to supermarket tabloids but forgetting supermarket tabloids are old the second they're printed, don't have comments, permalinks, crowd-sourcing, etc.

//Erica asks a question! It's something like what she said above, plus MB can be journalism or fluff. People form their opinions, which then shapes our reputation, but reading us and deciding for themselves.

I don't see a quesiton in either one of those and I SWEAR I didn't hear "reading MSM is for lazy people," but I'd have killed for someone to have said that out loud.

//E: The very title of this forum implies that MSM is complaining that bloggers aren't playing by the rules. Why can't somebody just come out and say that?

First, *I* don't believe that. And I'd already asked earlier about what rules? Second, are you suggesting someone in the audience should've spoken up?

So what quesitons are still on the table -- other than the money one, for which I haven't got a clue?

I was amazed to read your posting which contemplates some of the same issues I wrote about just a few days ago i "Do We Need a New Netiquite?". I feel the culture clash, but after formulating my thoughts in a couple blog postings, also have come to " believe a great balance can be found by having someone other than the moderator monitor the Twitterverse for relevant comments and bringing them to the attention of the moderator for further discussion."

Comments

1. Posted by: ryanol on February 26, 2008 3:26 PM:

maybe a dedicated twitter channel that is blasted via projector on the wall is the way to go.

did they already have that? Do they do that at these modern digital conferences?

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