The BBC is better than Twitter

Is mainstream media even relevant anymore? Twas funny watching the BBC fall over themselves looking for credible sources - Twitter knew..."

What? I mean really what?

Twitter didn't fucking know that Michael Jackson had died. Twitter just guessed, like everybody else.

And the BBC wasn't falling over themselves. They were doing what they have to do, which is not go on hearsay, but make sure they have got it right.

And as for mainstream media no longer being relevant...

Say I want to find out about something. Not breaking news. Not what people are wittering talking about in the last hour/day/week. I mean really know about something. And it doesn't involve seo or making money on the internet.

Obviously, I wouldn't consider Twitter. Or Digg. Or even blogs. How do I know which blog is any good?

I would go the the BBC website. Or read a newspaper. Obviously.

Actually, I didn't even trust Twitter to tell me Michael Jackson was dead. It wasn't until I saw the news confirmed by the LA Times that I was sure it was true.

I just hope the mainstream media can find a way to monetize their content because the idea of having to depend for information on the sort of half-baked nonsense quoted above is too horrible to contemplate.

More reasons to quit playing around with Twitter

More grist to my social-media-marketing is useless mill. Two small but significant social media success stories that generated nothing useful at all.

First example:

This is from a client account on twitter. I tweet occasionally for them, nothing special going on.

A week ago, out of the blue came a really nice recommendation from a tweep in the same industry sector who I had followed without knowing that the client had worked occassionally with them.

She has nearly 2,000 follewers so I could have hoped for a little bit of action, right?

Wrong. Analytics showed 2 visitors to the client's site from Twitter. And no spike in direct hits at all.

So nobody came. Yeah maybe somebody searching some day for what the client does just might come across the recommendation and act on it. Maybe. But then again, maybe not. There was no useful keywords in the tweet. Just the recommendation and the clients twitter account name.

Second example:

Another client got a sudden insurge from Stumbleupon. An old page must have been restumbled and oooh wow did get lots of traffic. Maybe 1,000 from Stumbleupon over 3 days.

But did they stick around? No.

Did they look at more than 1.1 pages? No.

Did a single one of them convert? Of course not.

Nothing new in this I know.

It just confirms me in my stick-in-the-mud belief that the industry obsession with social media and Twitter is just so misplaced. And that time spent elsewhere (linkbuilding) is just so much more likely to generate financial rewards.

Twitter is boooooooooooooooring

Just finding it hard to even browse Twitter nowadays.

So much self-promotion...

I used to find the characters engaging - you know, the ones who swear a lot or the ones who get baity a lot. But once you get to know what they do, well, they just keep on doing it so that gets a bit tedious.

And so much naval-gazing. When I checked in this morning, there was lots of this:

RT: @kevgibbo: RT @gcharlton: Five of my favourite Twitter fails http://bit.ly/106lV8 from @kevgibbo

The linked to page was clearly doing what it was supposed to which is generate buzz (aka get your friends to write RT a lot).

I knew I shouldn't have because I really don't give a xxxx about Twitter fails.

But the RTs got to me in the end so I clicked and...

Five rehashed non-stories about ... truthfully, I'm not even sure. I just couldn't bring myself to read in detail what these people had done wrong or right on Twitter. I know from the past that Jennifer Anniston's ex-boyfriend tweeted too much; and that that guy who went to Memphis said he hated the town and got into trouble.

The others? Who cares?

Maybe I should follow 100 more people. Yes, I think I will. An experiment to test out my jaundiced hypothesis that following more tweeps will just lead to more noise for the same pathetic amount of signal.

I'll report back in a week or two