Our group decided to do a write-in candidate and explore the experience of consuming news on Twitter. Since Twitter is so formless (or multi-formed), we first talked about how we typically access Twitter and what we use it for. There were four people in our group, and half of us primarily went to Twitter through laptops, and the other half leaned more to access via cell phone. Some used Hootsuite, some used Tweetdeck, and some used Twitter’s home page.
Then there’s the question is what is “news” on a Tweet. In some cases, the content of a news story fits within the 140 characters of a Tweet itself. More frequently, though, the Tweet is a link to a news story along with some comment about it by the person Tweeting. In that way, reading news on Twitter is like entering a story via the comment section of an article.
All of us follow both individual reporters we like plus the institutional feeds of news organizations (like @nytimes). None of us read all of the Tweets by the people we follow. Instead, we occasionally look at the flow of info into our personal Twitter accounts as if looking out a window.
Here were our brief answers to some questions posed on the assignment:
1. What kinds of values are embedded in this news experience?
Twitter favors “efficiency” of language, conversational, and humor
Twitter’s new Web design (pictured below), released this week, seems designed to attract more general users – to make Twitter look more like Facebook, and therefore more familiar.
2. What is this experience’s “theory of the user”? Who do they imagine you are? Does the experience also have a “theory of change”?
Twitter seems to assume users want to be part of a community, want to do networking or want to be part of a conversation (or all of the above).
3. What is this experience’s end goal? Virality & eyeballs? Deep listening? Exposé for action?
Social sharing. instant communication, breaking news
4. How are you empowered through this experience? Disempowered?
The barrier to entry is low, so it appears to create a more casual, level playing field. It’s possible for anyone to address public Tweets to anyone, no matter how famous. Sure, that celebrity probably won’t read the Tweet, but the system makes users feel empowered.
5. What kinds of stories is this method good for? bad for? underutilized for?
conversation starters
6. What form could you mash up with this to make new product for news?
Twitter wants to be the second screen
the global backchannel