Kami Huyse co-created this post’s thesis.
Is the Ashton Kutcher/Orpha Winfrey rush to dominate Twitter really a good or bad thing as so many are want to discuss? Is it the ultimate demonstration of the end of Twitter or America’s bad taste? Or is it none of the above? Or any of these topics relevant for an opt-in service, where individuals can chose who graces/pollutes their Twitter stream. The real lesson for communicators is not any of these grand media topics: Instead, it’s about fame.
Suddenly those who are clamoring to reach the pinnacle of bizarre and vain personal value — 1K, 5k, 10k or 25k followers — have been force fed an epiphany: Real fame is not created from a manicured and cultivated personal brand on Twitter. Real fame creates hundreds of thousands, even millions of “followers” in a matter of weeks. The stars have arrived and the nano-famous suddenly find themselves in the midst of an identity crisis. Isn’t it ironic that this drama occurred the week after Me 2.0 launched?
Those that decry the loss of Twitter’s innocence have a very clear option. Stop crying about the presence of real stars in social media, and start looking at what you are doing online.
On the content side, it’s a two-way medium. There are no victims from the Ashton Kutcher Twitterathon. Everyone has an option with such events. Unsubscribe. Or join the Kutcher party. Your community is as valuable or vapid as the people you follow and participate with in conversations.
More importantly from a communicators standpoint, this can be a great moment. We can finally look at this media and say, “What’s more important?” That we become as famous, even more famous than our clients and organizations who we represent? Somehow I don’t think Kutcher’s publicist has what it takes.
Or should we stop this nonsense and return to basic counselor values? It used to be that promoting clients came first, that the famous in our business we’re often the owners of businesses, true thought leaders and winners of award-worthy campaigns. Moving back to basics… Isn’t it more important that we understand the medium, how to communicate through it, and guide our organizations through the transition to two-way media and the phenomenal dynamic nature of this toolset? And if we are successful, naturally become recognized by our peers rather than seizing fame?
A Word to the Nano-Famous
A final word for the crushed nano-famous: Self esteem is created by doing esteemable things. Thus winning becomes a very subjective, personal valuation. Famous people are often winners caught in the act of doing great things (Denis Waitley, Psychology of Winning). That is to say they achieve notoriety by doing noteworthy things. Companies and people that are featured in the media have often done something unusual, hopefully for the betterment of our society.
Some keep their fame, some lose it. Some maintain it by continuing to do great things, others do it by manufacturing stunts that are deemed attention worthy by mass and now social media. Some just move on and go back to achieving their next goal.
Many times our society deems what is worthy of notoriety by pop standards. But tell me a mother (or father) who successfully raises her children, goes to graduate school and maintains a full-time job is not successful, or a winner. So what’s more important: Nano-fame with thousands of followers or achieving noteworthy, meaningful things in life, quietly, yet confidently.
P.S. If you hate me for this post, join my Facebook antifan page and write something nasty on the wall.
Nanofamous to me is just being esteemed in one’s field. If social media marketers ruled the world a Seth Godin or Brian Solis would be eclipsing 1 million followers. It really comes down to perspective.
Granted Ashton Kutcher had the pull to recruit a million plus people to join him (I hear he is an affable model from the Midwest…who stole Bruce Willis’ wife) on Twitter. But do any people in who have been on Twitter for 2+ years really care? It comes down to this: Ashton Kutcher has 1 million followers, but @ChrisBrogan has 65K followers who can actually mobilize. I’d like to see the breakdown if you extrapolated out total tweets of both parties. I’m betting Brogan comes out on top in that measurement.
Geoff
Once again I think you’ve posted a live one – a post that clips a nerve and produces conversation that can result in enlightened thought and approaches to use of a great tool (that is what social media is right?) I’m a late-comer to the TwitterJampar, being one of the gazillion 2008 adopters who joined in 2008 and figured out a way to use Twitter in January 2009. I too got caught up for a split second in people who saw fit to follow me. But as I started to put some of the cool twitter management tools to work to “analyze” my follower-base with return on time investment in mind, I realized that “for me” the greatest number is not those that follow me but rather those that follow AND are aligned with the mission for which I joined Twitter in the first place (to build a stream about social change, raise consciousness, and support others that are doing the same). After downloading my followers into excel, sorting, sifting, and labeling, I realized that it was time for some tweep-cleaning – unfollowing some that follow me as well as some that are not following back or otherwise providing value to my Twitter mission. It may cause me to lose some followers but my stream will be more relevant and the capacity of Twitter to help fulfill my mission will be increased. With this in mind, I don’t get overly excited when yet another fake oprah tweep follows me.
Sid/ChangeEvnglst
Stuart: I’ll take that bet any day of the week.
Sidney: You understand community much better than most, and that’s what Twitter is really all about. Community.
*gives a refreshed thumbs up*
My comic on the whole stupid thing: http://bit.ly/1gBAP
It ain’t the numbers. It’s the community.
Man Geoff…kudos to a very good perspective, and calling nano-famous out for what it is. I honestly ignored the whole thing, as much as possible, and took it as just another example of how narcissistic some spheres of Twitter had become. Thank you for bringing a smile to my face.
“Your community is as valuable or vapid as the people you follow and and participate with in conversations.”
Ding ding ding! Great post, Geoff; I love that line, in particular. Twitter should post it to their home page for all to see, along with changing “following/followers” to “listening/listeners” as @JeremyMeyers noted last week.
Great reminder that it’s the quality not the quantity of the people in our community that makes it all worthwhile.
What is interesting is that CNN did some coverage on Snoop Dogg’s wake and bake show on Twitter this week. As a newbie to twitter, I am still exploring what is good and bad. My opinion like any of the social media sites, is that when people “over use” there will be regulation like in the case of face book and my space.
Geoff, I don’t hate you for your post. I hate you for making me take an in-class final on the first day of bocce season ;) All joking aside, I’m going to make this post required reading for all the AF wings/commands/MAJCOMs/generals/etc. who are preoccupied with “followers” when dipping into social media. Oprah and Kutcher fall under my category that I call “social media non-stories.” It’s the pablum that gets thrown around Twitter or on blogs all day for no particular reason. If Ashton wants 1M followers, good for him. I have no idea what he or his followers are going to accomplish with that.
As you and the other commenters stated, the importance of Twitter should be based on the community. If a mother who is part of our Air Force Twitter community thanks me for putting out a story about her son’s command, then I did my job within out little community. If I share via my Twitter handle a link that helps my classmates, again, I accomplished the goals of a community. Hopefully the nano-, wannabe-, and uber-famous will all realize that communication is two way and is based on value, not numbers. Then they’ll have something worthwhile.
BTW–Thanks for a great semester.
Paul
Thanks for this big breathe of fresh air….sometimes the clamoring and sometimes ego-driven posts just to meet that SEO mark, speeches, get more speaking gigs, etc. in this field are exhausting.
I find myself starting to pay more attention to those who actually talk less, yet are doing more. But that’s just me. Thanks Geoff!