Reinventing the Town Square: Twitter Real-Time Conversations and TV
By Karla Robinson
November 30, 2012
November 30, 2012
- Before Internet, TV, radio and newspapers, citizens would gather in the town square to share news, creating a multi-directional, real-time dialogue. Centuries later, Twitter is recreating this conversation across various media, with particular emphasis on real-time television events.
- In a speech at his alma mater, the University of Michigan, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo discussed the tendency for new forms of media to disrupt established outlets. Although he acknowledges this “town square” reinvention creates problems such as rumor proliferation, he says Twitter is actually complementary, not harmful, to traditional media sources.
- “We once start to see multiple perspectives on a particular news story or event that’s happening,” Costolo says. “We once again start to have a shared experience across the globe about what’s happening and what we’re viewing right now. We once get an unfiltered perspective on what’s happening.”
- “But at the same time,” he adds, “it complements all these traditional forms of broadcast media, and all sorts of fascinating in ways that we would have never predicted.”
- While the town square approach had benefits, there were also disadvantages involving mistakes, rumors and the amount of time required to distribute information.
- “But while the invention of newspapers and radio and television solved the distribution problem and much of the accuracy problem, it dramatically increased the costs of distributing news or information, and it lost the multi-directional and unfiltered aspect that the town square used to provide,” notes GigaOM. “And it also made the news very ‘outside-in,’ with observers providing the details instead of participants.”
- The CEO sees Twitter as “a way of injecting the real-time, multi-directional and unfiltered nature of the town square back into the media,” explains the post. And rather than being disruptive, Twitter is complementary to TV and serves as a “second screen” experience for real-time events such as the Olympics and Hurricane Sandy.
- Costolo calls Twitter the “pulse of the planet” and sees it as a powerful media player that could drive viewership of live television events.
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