Just home much air time does Twitter actually deserve?

I’ve been watching the Brian Solis – Robert Scoble discussions here. Twitter continues to generate a huge amount of conversation, which is interesting considering:

Facebook has 250 million active users to Twitter’s 19 million (eMarketer research via Mashable)
A large number of users quite within the first month (Nielsen)
Twitter has no revenue stream

So, is Twitter the new attention dashboard? I have my doubts. I think that’s a very limited view of the conversations that are occurring online.

Will the real-time Web be a major influence on communication in the future? Absolutely.

The focus on the newness of things, the tool and its features and the immediacy of information (Twitter beat CNN to the Tiger Woods story this week by 45 mins) is compelling – but only to a point. Beyond that point, Twitter discussions tend to become rather sycophantic, repetitive, tactical and/or theoretical.

This stuff is important though; The immediacy of micro-blogs like Twitter influences the way that we value information and perceive it. It speeds up the news cycle and makes information even more of a commodity.

In a presentation at the recent Media140 event in Sydney Barry Saunders spoke about the danger of not considering context when we use the real-time Web as a primary source of information. This is among the most insightul and interesting things that I’ve heard said about this space. Its a very valid point, which is – along with others - being overlooked in a plethora of hype fuelled conversations about Twitter. Mr. Saunders make some additional points on related topics here.

The Twitter purists consider Twitter to be a conversational tool but many organisations are, in my experience, approaching it is a broadcast medium, as research that we are releasing tomorrow will show.

I will leave you with this analysis from BlogPulse, which shows comparative mentions of ‘Twitter’, ‘Unemployment’ and ‘Iraq’ in all forms of consumer generated media over the past six months:

Blogpulse