Coop's Corner

Did Missouri's U.S. senator, Claire McCaskill, just use Twitter to blab the timing of President Barack Obama's choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services?

On Saturday afternoon, McCaskill left this post on the microblogging site: "A little anxious about the announcement of HHS Sec. Hopeful that my pal Gov of Kansas will get the call. It should happen today or tomorrow."

Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill likes to twitter.

Obama's initial choice for the post, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, withdrew his candidacy after he acknowledged failing to pay $140,000 in taxes and interest.

Actually, the announcement--whenever it gets made--comes as a bit of an anticlimax. Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius has, indeed, been widely reported to be Obama's choice for the post, according to press leaks over the last couple of days. Still, there is that small matter of presidential prerogative to consider.

Oh well. I'm sure that McCaskill can "tweet" her apologies to the Twitter-in-chief, and all will be forgotten.

Besides, McCaskill has carved out a reputation as one of the most avid Twitter users in the Senate. When she noticed that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg showed up for President Obama's speech to Congress Tuesday night, following an operation related to her pancreatic cancer, McCaskill posted the following: "I did big wooohoo for Justice Ginsberg (sic). She looks good."

Last week, much was written after several members of Congress were found to have twittered during the president's nationally televised speech.

I hate it when someone else beats me to a post, but no sense crying about it. Besides, David Kirkpatrick sums up the situation far more eloquently than I ever could:

"All those people on the blogs and in the press who are obsessed over Facebook's valuation are really a bore. Anybody who thinks Microsoft's $15 billion valuation ever was a real common-stock valuation doesn't understand much about finance. And nobody but Microsoft would have wanted to lead a round at that valuation--getting into Facebook had unique value for the company which most of all wants to prevent Google from making further inroads into its business."

"It may still prove to have been a brilliant stroke for Microsoft--the software giant is in the door with search on Facebook just when Facebook is the platform where more and more of the Internet's content is being created. There's a special characteristic to all that data--it is not searchable by Google. A nice score for Microsoft for a mere $240 million. Who cares how much of FB it got in return? It kept Google out."

Kirkpatrick, who is working on a book about Facebook, maintains a must-read blog about the company on--where else?--Facebook. (Talk about eating your own dog food!) He makes the correct point that when Facebook closed its deal with Microsoft back in fall 2007, that still was during the bull market's heyday. So when you wake up, check the news aggregators and find yet more mindless musing over the "news" that Facebook--or any other tech company for that matter--is worth a lot less in February 2009, you have to wonder whether these folks have been paying attention.

Still, the fascination remains for the chattering classes. When the conversation turns to Facebook (and Twitter, as well,) the bloviation-fest is nonstop. Especially regarding possible investments from venture firms.

It's easy to understand the valuation obsession. It's another holdover from a recent past that now seems forever ago. You remember those days, back when the economy was working? Back when the blogosphere was perpetually fascinated by widgets and irrelevant Web site tweaks? But I'm with Kirkpatrick on this one. It's boring beyond description. No matter. As the recession-depression rips through the economy, there's important news to consider.

If we haven't already reached a "jump the shark" moment with Twitter, I wonder whether we're getting near.

Not because every disaster--natural or man-made--now elicits mandatory blog gushing about how Twitter left the "mainstream media" in the dust. Not because The New York Times technology columnist finally deigned to get a Twitter account and write about his experiences. And not because another venture capitalist decided to invest millions for a piece of the company.

(Credit: CNET News)

That's all part of the usual fascination which attends any new technology. But how long before the early adopters get outnumbered by the swarms of carpetbaggers? Some signs already are popping up into view.

The publishers John Wiley & Sons have just issued a tome with the remarkable title Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time.

Think about that message for a moment. Twitter power? Dominate? And all along, here I was naively thinking that Twitter was all about social interaction on the Internet and the unimpeded flow of communication.

Silly me.

The dust jacket identifies the book's author, Joel Comm, as "one of the world's leading experts on strategies for making money online." Ken Burge, who gets second billing, worked eight years at Microsoft and is Comm's business partner. Domination? Of course.

Anthony Robbins, he of fire walk (and late-night infomercial) fame, supplied the warm-up with a New Age-like preface.

"Technology such as Twitter has the potential to give us more than just an opportunity to tell others what happened in our day. If we understand and appreciate what Twitter is capable of, we can use it to instantly share our lives with others, and we can use it to reach more people in a meaningful way."

And make a buck. (Hey, what could be more American?)

Comm and Burge allow that Twitter's "not a place where people come to sell--and pushing sales hard on Twitter just isn't going to work." But in the next breath, they add that any "friends" you meet on Twitter may serve as valuable stepping stones to the ultimate goal, which is to get them to sign on the line which is dotted.

"If you do manage to build up friends on Twitter, you should find that those friends see you as the first stop for the products or services they need. People always prefer to do business with people they know, and they get to know them by talking to them and swapping ideas with them. On the Internet, people are doing that on Twitter."

Ugh.

You can see where their argument is heading. The rest of the book's 234 pages is devoted to doling out tips on how to game the system to reel in "loyal customers and more sales overall." One segment describes "how to be interesting on Twitter." So much for being yourself, as if that were not enough. Now you've got a phony formula where you just paint by the numbers.

At the end of the book, the authors cap everything off with a 30-day plan "for dominating Twitter."

I can't fault anyone for trying to cash in on the latest craze. Opportunity always knocks. They did it during the dot-com bubble. They did it during the housing bubble. And they did during the stock bubble.

What's odd is that they're trying to cash in on the mainstreaming of Twitter even before Twitter figures that one out for itself. In the meantime, can you really "dominate" your market, one Tweet at a time, as the book's title suggests? Maybe the better question is whether you should want to. (Tweet your responses to me at "Coopeydoop.")

I'm an unabashed New York Times fan boy. Warts and all, it remains the best edited daily newspaper in this country. Disagree? Then come find me on Twitter and let's mix it up. (My handle is "coopeydoop").

You won't have a chance to do the same with many Times reporters and editors--on Twitter or any other social network, for that matter. Batting it back and forth with the hoi polloi just isn't part of the drill. Not, mind you, because they lack for opinions or have no stomach for engagement.

The Poynter Institute reposted the text of a memo from Craig Whitney, the paper's assistant managing editor, to his newsroom, in which he urges extreme caution in how Times employees use Facebook and other social-networking sites. For starters:

"One of them is that outsiders can read your Facebook page, and that personal blogs and "tweets" represent you to the outside world just as much as an 800-word article does. If you have or are getting a Facebook page, leave blank the section that asks about your political views, in accordance with the Ethical Journalism admonition to do nothing that might cast doubt on your or The Times's political impartiality in reporting the news. Remember that although you might get useful leads by joining a group on one of these sites, it will appear on your page, connoting that you "joined" it -- potentially complicated if it is a political group, or a controversial group."

Whitney is an accomplished Times veteran whose work I've admired over the years. But this memo sums up some of the very reasons why so many believe the mainstream media is doomed to irrelevance.

The Times achieved primacy in American journalism by getting the story (usually) right and delivering the news with depth and nuance. By itself, the formula that worked so well for the Times in the 20th century may not be enough in the 21st. That's because the fragmentation of media has created a multiplicity of voices on the Internet, some good, others less so, where the authority of the Times depends on more than a prototypical article.

So it is that the decision to separate the Times from its public strikes me as completely arbitrary. What's more, it makes for an utterly boring one-way conversation--and that's no conversation at all. Whitney may not want the chief White House correspondent riffing in public about the failings of the 43rd president, but how about a little give? For instance, I'd be shocked if Frank Rich does not think George Bush was an abject idiot. Or that William Kristol does not believe Bill Clinton remains a skirt-chasing hippy hedonist. Seems they also ought to have the green light to tweet to their hearts' content.

But it's not just Facebook and Twitter. Consider the following:

"Be careful not to write anything on a blog or a personal Web page that you could not write in The Times -- don't editorialize, for instance, if you work for the News Department. Anything you post online can and might be publicly disseminated, and can be twisted to be used against you by those who wish you or The Times ill -- whether it's text, photographs, or video. That includes things you recommend on TimesPeople or articles you post to Facebook and Digg, content you share with friends on MySpace, and articles you recommend through TimesPeople."

In other words, don't write anything that's passionate or pointed in ways that might stir people beyond what the Times provides in its news columns. Pardon my sarong but that's like serving up a diet of rice cakes to people hungry for General Tso's chicken.

Each time our little world suffers a disaster, man-made or otherwise, count on the usual suspects to rush to their keyboards and pound out yet more bloviation about the existential importance of Twitter to our 24 x 7 ecosystem.

Before some of you jump ugly on me, let me hasten to mention that I've long found Twitter to be extremely useful. But how long before we can move past this "wonder of Twitter" moment? An earthquake in China, the Mumbai massacre, war in Gaza--Twitter's proved itself as a tool to report and comment on breaking news. If you haven't been paying attention, Twitter might seem wondrous. For the rest of us, it's old hat by now.

Yet so many of the usual suspects insist on remaining awestruck. So it was that today's U.S. Air crash triggered the predictable run of worshipful commentary. Silicon Alley Insider's headline: "U.S. Airways Crash Rescue Picture: Citizen Journalism, Twitter At Work," was representative of the chatter among the TechMeme crowd.

Maybe it was a slow day for some, but I cringed at the invidious comparisons drawn between the "mainstream media" and Twitter. By now, that's simply a cliche observation. Any news-gathering organization with any hope of surviving is reorganizing its operations around the best technology possible--and Twitter naturally figures into a successful plan.

A little perspective would be welcome. As I tweeted a few days ago, Twitter is the beginning of wisdom, not the end. (Especially in 140 characters.) And at the risk of pointing out the painfully obvious, you can also send photos on a mobile phone without Twitter. The devices are built to do that and millions of us actually know how to operate the devices. Imagine that.

This reminds me so much of the late 1990s when the novelty of the Internet had yet to wear off. Back then, the "Web reacts" article were in vogue, no matter how mundane the subject: Web reacts to Princess Di crash. Web reacts to Lewinsky dress. Web reacts to Bigfoot contemplating his left bunion. Etc. It was a phase. The Internet was a new toy and we were understandably infatuated at how you could actually write a story and put it up on the Internet. Magic!

Eventually, though, we grew out of it. How long before we outgrow the Twitter obsession? Beats me. It's just too easy a headline for some to resist writing again and again. Have at, if you must. But if you want to keep prostrating yourselves before Twitter, make sure to also fall on your knees before the telephone each time someone dials 911.

Western civilization may never again be the same.

Grant Robertson, who goes by the Twitter handle, @grobertson, used the microblogging service to propose marriage to his girlfriend, Christina Warren, known in the tweetosphere as @film_girl. (Thanks to Erick Krangel for bringing this to everyone's attention.)

This isn't the first time nerds have turned to technology for amorous pursuits. But it's about as cutting edge--or lame, as it gets. All depends on your point of view. So sound off and vote in our poll to the right.

Michael Dell gets a lot of the credit for pioneering the direct sale of PCs to the public. The reality is that there is a legion of now long-forgotten mail order entrepreneurs who came along earlier. He just did it better than all the rest.

So it was with more than usual interest that I read a piece published by InternetNews.com earlier this week in which Dell's eponymous company claimed that sales alerts on Twitter had resulted in about $1 million in sales.

Before anyone sneers that a million bucks to a multibillion dollar company is relative chump change, who can afford to get blase in an economy where every technology company is super-anxious about making its numbers.

Fact is that while Twitter is still figuring out what it wants to be when it's all grown up, this may be a turning point. I'm hedging here because I can't pretend to know whether Twitter will make it as an independent company, or wind up as a cool feature in a bigger software maker's product line. (And anyone who says they do know is just full of it.)

Twitter this: There's a sale!

(Credit: Dell)

Regardless, the Dell experiment is important because it suggests that Twitter can be a lot more than a boy toy for the cool kids. Indeed, the technology's potential role as a supplementary sales channel has not gone unnoticed by some of Dell's rivals.

"It's not rocket science, but give them credit for jumping on it," said an executive with another PC maker. "Everyone can do the same thing--and they likely will."

Sour grapes aside, that's an accurate reading. What Dell accomplished isn't difficult to replicate. The company exploited Twitter's broadcast appeal to spread the word about periodic online specials. Call it another form of direct marketing, albeit with a Web 2.0 twist. But at its core, Dell simply tapped another channel to communicate with potential sales leads.

"We did it as an experiment," said Dell's Bob Pearson, who heads up communities and conversation for the company. "We wanted to see whether people would sign up." By that measure, it was a success. Pearson said that about 65 Twitter groups had formed in the last half year. "It showed us that there are a certain number people who want alerts about certain types of products."

Thinking about the future of online advertising, this much is clear: Customers want to share ideas and in online world people are likely to respect what their peers tell them. If you buy into the argument that the Web reflects reality, then it's better to be part of the conversation than a bystander.

Companies are salivating over the sales potential of social networks. With Dell racking up $1 million in sales from Twitter, this is long past the proof of concept stage. Imitation being the highest form of flattery and all that. But Twitter is just a delivery vehicle. The bigger question is whether the suits restrain their basic instincts and not turn into spam-happy pains in the neck.

To be continued.

So there I was, watching the replay of Katie Couric's interview with Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin when a tweet flew by on my Twitter transom. Dan Gillmor was asking why the Democrats' Joe Biden didn't get equal grief for making dopey remarks. Among the Best of Joe-isms was his recent blooper confusing the timeline for FDR and the age of television.

Does she Twitter?

(Credit: State of Alaska)

Well, I think I have an answer. But I've taken an oath to keep my big mouth shut for the remainder of the political season--at least on these pages. (If you want to bore yourself reading my election rants, you'll have to go up on Twitter.) But I was so keen to share my opinion with Dan that I immediately composed a ditty of a twitty and sent it off as a direct message. Not so fast, Twitter informed me; Dan was not "following" me.

Bummer. As much as I was sure that he might enjoy my 140-character pearls of wisdom, there was no way to engage in a private Twitter dialogue. I think I understand why Twitter maintains the padlock. Who wants every Tom, Dick, and Harry convinced you're a knucklehead sending private tweets to that effect? We already live with the unexpected consequences of unfettered access on e-mail. There's enough spam in the world, thank you. (A few days ago I saw what purports to be a hack that allows you to send direct messages to non-followers.)

Right now Twitter is populated by the cyber equivalent of gated communities. If you're not part of the club, you don't get to participate in the gabfest. A more general critique is that Twitter still makes it hard to find folks to follow. I can't follow what I don't know about. But that's fodder for another day. Right now on my wish list of future features, I'd love to see Twitter incorporate something akin to a "knock knock" button where you can still ping someone who is not your friend. It would be up to you whether to grant permission. The idea here being a more free-wheeling conversation that allows more people to participate. And isn't that supposed to be the point or am I missing something?

This was one of those rare events in the calendar: Google's Gmail went down for the count while Twitter, everyone's regular punching bag, was full of chatterers who couldn't stop blabbing about the outage.

As my colleague Dan Farber recently reminded everyone in these pages, sometimes it does rain on the cloud. That's just the nature of cloud computing, which is still in its relative infancy. Truth be told, considering the load being shouldered, I'm more surprised that systems aren't breaking more often than they do.

For more, check out the video interview I did with Webware's Rafe Needleman on the CNET News Daily Debrief.