When I saw this Mashable post, I almost spit my wine (yeah, I am drinking wine, hell, it’s 8.50 pm) onto the screen. Here’s the headline:
Did CNN Live Snub Twitter in Favor of Facebook?
“What the f* are we, in high school?” was my first response. Then I realized how important it is to some folks that “traditional” or “old” media like CNN validate “new” media like Facebook or Twitter.
Honestly, I don’t get it.
And then again, I do get this: that absent a centered strategy, a network like CNN is going to cast its lot on any given day, or story, with whoever seems to be best suited to give it the most appeal, the most cred, and the most, well, arm candy.
And then it hit me. When it comes to the media business, we’re in high school all over again. The CNNs are the jocks, and the hot apps like Facebook and Twitter are the Cute Girls.
Now, it all makes sense.
I’ve never understood why CNN would bother hyping Twitter. 99.99% of their audience has no clue how to @reply to CNN.
It would make more sense, however, to have a Facebook page for every show and use that for audience feedback.
But still completely ridiculous.
I think we may be kindred spirits:
http://agitationist.com/twitter-officially-goes-mainstream
CNN also partnered with Facebook for one of the debates during the election, so they already have a relationship and that made the technological implementation probably less complicated and less costly.
Yesterday Shirley Brady (BusinessWeek.COM) tweeted that it’s important to also follow their journalists’ blogs, not just their magazine articles.
So I did a quick ‘n’ dirty blog list: http://business-blogs.org
I asked for a response, but got none. I do agree that it seems like old media has a lot of angst — “hold off” seems to be far more widespread than “embrace”. But I’m guessing very little was ever achieved by being slow or even standing still.
My message to old media (i.e. “print” or “traditional” media/publishing): The medium is the message, and increasingly domains are the medium — deal with it !
Hey, that might be something you could talk (or twitter? 😉 about: Web 3.0 = one-stop shops are dead… — and the tangled web we’re weaving is beginning to take shape/form!
;D nmw
I think part of it is an issue of keeping your options open, by chasing lots and lots of girls (facebook’s huge group of eyeballs), versus focusing on just a couple girls (twitter’s smaller following).
“The CNNs are the jocks, and the hot apps like Facebook and Twitter are the Cute Girls.” Awesome.
Who are the nerds – dailies?