Inventing for the Rest of Us

Last night I was at TechNow09, where they told us to twitter the event. Last week a friend of mine who has an online retail site is adding an automatic twitter new product feed to his system. Two weeks ago Jon Stewart mentioned the word “tweet” on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Demi Moore bends over in a bathing suit and Ashton Kutcher catches a snapshot and tweets his Twitter followers his praise for god, along with that picture.

All this has happened in just the last few weeks. I first noticed everyone was mentioning Twitter when I heard something on CNN about Twitter. Now I’ve known about Twitter (and pondered on whether/how to use it) for over 2 years.

A guy by the name of Marc Nathan with the Houston Technology Center was the first person I knew to REALLY use twitter. I’ll admit I don’t know why people use it. I didn’t even get a texting plan until last month. I don’t enjoy texting, so I don’t know why people would want to text to Twitter and tell other people what they are doing. And what about the followers? I have enough going on in my life, do I really have time to follow other people, most of whom I’ve never met or had a real conversation (much less an email) with.

In Inc or one of the magazines I read, they did a cover article on the guy behind Twitter last year. So it’s nothing new, but all of a sudden, tweeting is the thing to do.

I made me really appreciate two things, Macolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point theory and the publicity snowball.

First I wondered if Twitter was just an early adopter thing, and not really meant for mainstream . . . that was until one of the major news channels picked it up. I wonder if that news channel helped Twitter get over that tipping point, because since then, it’s been all about Twitter this, Tweet that, I just Twooted.

Second, it made me appreciate the snowball (or lemming-like if you prefer) mentality of publicity. Yea, Twitter had made the rounds in the early adopter world. But that was just a small snowball compared to getting press on CNN , Headline News, Fox News, etc. So I’m not sure if CNN was the first to do the cover story, but for whichever big news outlet was the first, did they just add some significant size to the Twitter publicity snowball?

Publicity as I’ve come to find out, will build on itself. Start small, build up. Don’t try to go after USA Today right from the get go. Use your past publicity to slowly, but surely, climb up that publicity ladder. The Twitter publicity proves the snowball effect.

And is there really a difference between the snowball effect, and the tipping point? I’d have to think a little more on that. But whatever your opinion, you gotta admit Twitter is one big a** snowball. I wouldn’t want to get hit by it!

Now onto tweeting about this blog post. (PS I’m still trying to find a good way to use Twitter without getting cramps in my thumbs.)

Daigle