#Activate2010 - Filtering the Twitterstream

Rather interesting observation yesterday - I was busy with client work so couldn't attend the Grauniad Activate 2010 conference, so I dipped in (as is my wont) to the User Generated Twitterstream (#activate2010). At the same time there was a Guardian liveblog and a moderated Twitterstream from its Journalists was going on.

What was interesting to me was the massive degradation in the User Generated Twitterstream. Last year, and early this year, you could tune in to such Twitterstreams and get a fairly decent "user generated media" view of what was going on. The "User Generated" Activate Twitterstream yesterday was....well, "unhelpful" would put it mildly.

Key issues I spotted were that retweeting of content was far more focussed than before, but not in a good way - the main focus was on:

(i) Uncritical mass retweeting of "soundbite sayings" - "Kool aid" homilies etc

(ii) Similar mass retweeting of very dubious statistics, again totally uncritically.

(iii) In fact my impression overall is that the Twitterstream was becoming an "empty vessels making the most noise" mode of communication. The Retweeting seemed more about marking cyberterritory by pissing on the digital lamp-posts than actually communicating anything.

The disparity between the Twitterstream and the Grauniad "Journalist Generated" Liveblog and Twitterstream became more and more marked as the day wore on, leading me to ormulate two hypotheses for "User Generated Media" going forward:

(i) The "Citizen Reporter" on the twitterstream, who was a pretty reliable eyewitness 2007-9. is increasingly being drowned out by flacks, fanbois and noisy numpties. "Proper" mainstream media journalism again is becoming a far more trusted source. The age of "You Media" is over.

(ii) I eventually stopped watching the Twitterstream, setting up a temporary stream from a group of people whose views I trust that were there. In other words, the Twitter Signal to Noise ratio is gettng to the point where filtering the folksonomy by trusted source will be essential.

The obvious lesson for presenters from yesterday is that using mental bubblegum soundbites that send the twitternumpties into RT frenzy is a far more effective way of getting your message across than any reasoned argument. That was ever thus, true - but the only danger with this, I would argue from my reasoning above, is that over time it degrades to lowest common denominators sans moderation - a tragedy of the commoners, as it were. It will work like online advertising - you do it to get to the most influential people, but they are the first to avoid it - so you wind up banging your gong to the digital peasantry.

And on the way, the countless retweeting empty vessels toll the death bell for Citizen Journalism on Social Media platforms.

No what surprises me a lot about this post is that I wrote it! I'm no friend of the MSM, and a fan of the whole "2.0" thingy in general, but what this showed me is that, left to its own unfiltered devices, "User Generated" content is a lot like a the h3nry Sewer of Life - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. And like that sewer, if what is being put in is a lot of crap.....

As an aside, it may also mean that the Good Stuff in future will be found behind Times style paywalls and what you get for free is increasingly Ad-peddled and raddled sh*t (as the Economist implies today - but the article is, newly, behind a paywall.....).