Twitter is the cyber equivalent of the Members Only jacket.
You remember the Members Only jacket, don’t you? In the 1980s, you either wore one or you were more of a recluse than Ducky from “Pretty in Pink.”
You joined in the crowd and got one, only to discover it didn’t really keep you warm, stained and tore easily, and by the end of the decade was heading to Goodwill. You wondered what the big deal was.
This morning’s knockout of Twitter like a Mike Tyson punch may be that Members Only jacket moment where we wonder, what is the big deal?
In the past year or so, it has become as vogue for businesses and media sources to tout they have a Twitter page as it once was to say they had a fax number, an E-mail address or a Web page.
But the problem for Twitter that those other means of communication don’t have is you’re relying on one floor of people on 539 Bryant Street in San Francisco to keep it running.
It would take a disaster of planet-wide proportions to knock out all phones, or all E-mails or the entire internet. To stop Twitter, a squirrel can electrocute itself on a power pole of Bryant Street and there’s a service interruption.
Not very reliable.
We certainly saw the good that Twitter could do as a form of communication with the continuing drive for freedom in Iran, but that doesn’t mean it is a decent replacement for the E-mail or text marriage … any more than the carrier pigeon was a great form for mass communication despite its success in saving lives in World War I.
People who have come to rely on Twitter for business had a rude awakening this morning, but it wasn’t like it was the first time Twitter has been down. People have come to get used to the Twitter’s fail whale screen like they used to the test screen if they stayed up too late past the Late Late Show.
At this moment, they may be thinking of sending Twitter to Goodwill, like that Members Only jacket.
