Alessandra Stanley, the frequently snarky (don’t you love that word?) TV and media columnist for the New York Times, unleashed her inner Twitter hater in her column this past week. Believe me, Stanley is no fan of Twitter, as the following excerpt makes abundantly clear:

"Those who say Twitter is a harmless pastime, which skeptics are free to ignore, are ignoring the corrosive secondary effects. We already live in an era of me-first journalistm, autobiographical blogs and first-person reportage. Even daytime cable news is clotted with Lou Dobbsian anchors who ooze self-regard an intemperate opinion."

"Self-regard and intemperate opinion?" Methinks the Times writer doth protest a bit too much. That criticism actually sounds a lot like some Alessandra Stanley columns I have read in the past.

But I digress. Twitter clearly has it detractors (like Stanley, and that wonderful curmudgeon George Parker, who wails against Twitter almost daily in his AdScam blog), but it also has its dedicated, even passionate supporters.

Twitter certainly has grown like wildfire. As of today, Twitter has 6 million unique users, up from just 800,000 last year. That is phenomenal growth by anyone’s standards. The Twitter brand has also expanded commensurately, becoming a true cultural touchstone in today’s web-focused society.

Wall Street Journal editor Julia Angwin recently wrote an interesting first person account of how she came to use Twitter. In her full page piece, she makes an observation about Twitter’s growing popularity that seems to me to be exactly right:

"Twitter is not about chatting with your friends–it’s about promoting yourself."

There you have it. The power and appeal of Twitter, all in one simple sentence!

One strong Twitter advocate was discussed in Stanley’s article — Rick Sanchez, the afternoon anchor for CNN. Sanchez has built his new CNN brand on a very of the moment "Citizen Journalism" platform. Well, that is one way to differentiate himself in the cable TV jungle. And, for now at least, it seems to be working for him. On  his daily program, Sanchez has multiple screens playing back nearly real-time feedback from "citizen journalists" (if that is what you can call them…Sanchez certainly does) on Twitter and MySpace. Sanchez is making sure to cover his social media bases. Very trendy of him.

While Sanchez is receiving that viewer and social media feedback, he is also Twittering the entire time. Some of it is pretty inane stuff, as Stanley correctly points out ("I’m getting out of the shower now, have to get some breakfast"), but other Tweets actually add interesting and valuable immediacy and personal context to his CNN reporting.

So, here’s the question I’ve been ponering of late: Is Twitter a corrosive and collossal waste of time as its detractors delight in  pointing out, or is it really the future of media, marketing and pretty much everything else, as its passionistas now prostelytize?

When it comes to Twitter, either you love it or hate it. There does not seem to be much of a middle ground. Of course, that’s not entirely true, because I, for one, inhabit the middle ground regarding Twitter and its utility and influence. While I don’t believe Twitter is the second coming for media and marketing, I also don’t see it as a fraud or purely a passing fancy.

Net-net, I truly think the jury still is out on Twitter. It certainly will be interesting to see how it develops and where it goes in terms of business and culture. I don’t think anyone really knows yet.

I registered for the site a couple of months ago and have been Twittering fairly regularly (at least once a day) ever since. I am not sure if there is any tangible value in this exercise for me or my marketing firm THUNDER FACTORY, but I did want to see what all the fuss was about. Here is what I have learned so far:

• Twitter is definitely a fascinating and fast growing new media and communications channel. I can already see a number of ways that I can capitalize on that channel to drive leads for my business, build my "personal brand," and advance my goal of getting at least some of my opinions "heard." Contrary to Stanley’s criticism of citizen journalism overall and Twitter in particular, I’d like to think that I share those opinions in a "temperate" way. However, guilty as charged on the "first person reportage" claim. That is exactly why I unapologetically blog!
• Twitter is not a total game changer in business operations, as one "social media expert" opined recently on Ad Age.com. (Have you noticed the rapidly proliferating number of social media "experts" out and about these days? They are reproducing faster than bacteria in a swamp.)
• Near as I can tell, no one is going to use Twitter anytime soon to get banks to start lending again, help GE halt the precipitous decline in its share price, or encourage car buyers to choose Pontiac’s and Chrysler’s over Toyota’s and BMW’s. Nope, Twitter can’t do that yet (or ever).
• Sorry to say, Twitter is not going to fundamentally change the basic functions of business, but it can enhance key activities such as marketing, research, customer feedback and monitoring, issues management and even product development. (Twitter would be a great way to "co-create" ideas with large groups of people, which would be very valuable in the product development process.)
• There are some people who obviously spend an inordinate amount of their time on Twitter (i.e., Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, et al). One wonders what else they do in life, as they seem to be sending out Tweets every few minutes and sometimes even seconds.) They must be getting something out of Twitter, or I assume they would not be doing this. I suspect Twitter is a marketing and community feedback channel for them, both valuable functions.
• I wonder how many Tweets the average Twitterer actually reads? I realize these Tweets are mercifully short, but if you follow a number of people, they just keep coming at you. Also, how many people actually click on to the links provided by the professional Twitterites? That would be an interesting metric that really demonstrates the value of the channel.
• I finally realized why people seek to follow more and more people on Twitter. The more Twitterers you follow, the more other people follow you. Every time I follow someone else, they typically reciprocate. And, that puts my name on other lists, which brings in more followers, too. And the process just keeps expanding and growing.
• People love collecting folowers on Twitter, just as they obsess about gaining more friends on Facebook. This has become an end to itself on Twitter and Facebook. Not sure what that really gets you, but for a marketer, there is real value to growing a following like this. We marketers know the value of an "qualified list." Twitter is a pretty good way of building such a list. You just need to make sure to not abuse it.
• Twitter may not have a business model yet, but it is pretty easy to see where one could emerge. The question is, can they adopt a model that is not intrusive to the users? Can they maintain the social, free-form essence and ethos of Twitter and turn it into a real business marketing tool? We’ll see!

As I said earlier, the jury really still is out on Twitter. But, given my short experience with Twitter so far, I would say it has real promise for marketers and anyone (like politicians, celebrities and and commentators) who wants to generate broad awareness for their opinions and ideas.

Having said that, I think some of the biggest proponents of Twitter are getting way ahead of themselves. The fact is, Twitter is not the marketing and media panacea some claim it to be. That is just wishful hyperbole that some are hoping will turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When the Dot Com bubble inevitably burst back at the beginning of this new millennium (just when I had the brilliant timing to launch THUNDER FACTORY!), a lot of Internet naysayers commented with obvious schadenfreude: "See, the Internet didn’t change everything after all." (In fact, they sounded a lot like the Times’ Alessandra Stanley did in her column this week.)

But, we now know those naysayers were wrong. The early Dot Com stage may have faltered badly, but we soon found out that the Web really did change almost everyhing in fundamental ways. Today, the Web and digital media in general have altered virtually every facet of life, from communications and commerce, to entertainment, socializing, news gathering, health care and even reading! And that is just a short list of the things reimagined and re-engineered by digital media.

Of course, Twitter — like its fellow social networking sites Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn — is a growing, even a leading, part of that social and digital media revolution. Just on that fact alone, Twitter is neither the inconsequential or corrosive force that Alessandra Stanley seems to think it is.

So, Twitter may yet have a similarly major impact on my business of marketing, and on life overall, but we really don’t know yet. The reality is, it could end up flaming out in the future. That is what makes digital media endlessly interesting.

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