Liminal states

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Comments

1. Ivan Boothe | 02-Apr-09 at 10:11 am | Permalink

   Jon — I think Twitter is a tool, not a strategy. Maybe it’s semantics, but I think of a strategy as having a sense of an overall arc of a campaign, where we want to be, how we want to engage supporters, how we want to work with allies, how we anticipate responding to opponents, and what the possible endgames are. Twitter is one tool that can be deployed in the service of that strategy, but by itself it’s no more a strategy than slapping up brochureware on Facebook is “member engagement.” It still has to be used strategically.

2. Adam | 02-Apr-09 at 10:20 am | Permalink

   I’ve only just realised that my adherence to email newsletters as a campaigning tool has pretty much left me in the dark ages… a few weeks on twitter and I can see the huge potential for collaborative intelligence, action and activism. 90% of ALL human communication is pretty banal really, but that’s just the glue. The potential for twitter to metaphorically provide the dendrites and axons connecting the neural net of collaborative intelligence is massive. And when you start playing with things like http://plasticmind.com/twitster/ 🙂 As an ecampaigning facilitator I’m like a kid in a sweet shop!

3. jon | 02-Apr-09 at 10:23 am | Permalink

   Thanks for the comment, Ivan.

   I totally agree that an organization’s Twitter approach has to fit in with their overall mission, vision, and strategies. In many cases, it might just be a tool. Sometimes it’s more. It seems to me that the pattern of examples above shows a situation where “Twitter” is a strategy in its own right.

   Twitter’s got the potential of giving women equal voice, involving youth, and interacting with people who don’t have access to computers and broadband network connection. It’s a way of engaging online with communities marginalized by the progressive blogosphere. It allows incredibly fast conversation with broadcast capabilities. All three of those are incredibly strategic, and Twitter is at the core of them.

   Are we just using the word with different meanings?

4. jon | 02-Apr-09 at 10:31 am | Permalink

   Adam, I very much have that kid in a candy shop feel too. Twitster looks great … I’ll definitely check it out. Another interesting site is Twopular, which does social network analysis for hashtags that make it to the top 10, which lets you do things like compare-and-contrast their snapshots of topprog and tcot.

   Thanks for the comment!

5. Shaun Dakin | 02-Apr-09 at 12:50 pm | Permalink

   Twitter is PART of a Strategy.

   Here is what I did with it last year to drive the debate on Robocalls.

   http://www.siteworx.com/company/news/executive_briefing_series/social_media_issue_advocacy/

   So, I don’t think Twitter can be it. Any communications strategy must include a number of tactics. Twitter is part of your “tool kit”.

   Shaun
   @EndTheRoboCalls
   @IsCool
   @AskThePresident (manage)

6. jon | 02-Apr-09 at 2:09 pm | Permalink

   Thanks for the link, Shaun. Any readers who don’t know of the great work the End the Robocalls has done — named one of the 16 great Twitter moments of 2008 — should definitely take the time to find out more.

   Once again I wonder if there’s a terminology difference. I’m certainly not saying that Twitter can be a strategy in vaccuum; and there are lots of times it makes sense to view it as a tool in a toolkit. It seems to me that the coalition behind Ask the President approached it that way, and it worked well for them. With Ari, Micah, Andrew, Katrina, and all the coalition partners connections in the DC/NY political blog and traditional media world, there were a lot of other good channels for them to get the word out and build buzz … and they did a great job. Jake Tapper asked a couple of #askpres questions at Gibbs press briefing on Thursday.

   By contrast #p2 and Get FISA Right approached Ask the President using Twitter as a strategy. Without virtualy no blog coverage or press coverage, we also did a great job. Two of the questions we were highlighting were answered by President Obama in the online town hall, and then highlighted on WhiteHouse.gov blog. Get FISA Right also gained a valuable connection with White House correspondent Jon Ward of the Washington Times. So not only was it a strategy, it was a successful strategy.

   What am I missing here?

   jon

   PS: I had coffee earlier with a friend of mine who does strategy at a large corporation. Her reaction when I told her about this thread: “Of course Twitter’s a strategy!”

7. jon | 02-Apr-09 at 2:19 pm | Permalink

   A few minutes after Adam’s comment above, I noticed this tweet from him:

   FCO comment on barring #WDM (World Development Movement) and War on Want from #G20 http://www.wdm.org.uk/news/no10bansWDM01042009.htm

   Within less than an hour, the news had gotten from a blog in London to me on the Pacific Coast of the US via Twitter, from my blog post to Adam back in the UK via Twitter, and from him to all of his friends and anybody monitoring the #WDM hashtag. Oh and I had never met Adam before. As I pointed out in Activism at the speed of skittles, things happen quickly in the Twitterverse.

   It’s also a great example of engaging with communities marginalized by the big blogs of “progressive blogosphere”. How much coverage of anti-poverty activism do you see on Daily Kos, Open Left, etc. etc.? For that matter a quick scan of dKos’ and OpenLeft’s front page reveals no news at all from the G-20. Meanwhile, on Twitter, there’s vibrant conversation, including on-the-scene reports from Cheryl Contee of Jack and Jill Politics and many others.

   BBC technology correspondent Mark Hall’s Twitter on the front line gives the view from London.

8. Adam | 02-Apr-09 at 2:49 pm | Permalink

   when I advise a campaign group on using social media, I adopt the position that twitter is a tool, or a component of a larger strategy. But think sideways, just for a second. IF twitter were a strategy, what would it be a strategy for? I have my opinions (and I think there is a better strategy yet to come) but I’m off to Snowdonia for the weekend, so they will have to wait 😉

9. Shaun Dakin | 02-Apr-09 at 3:04 pm | Permalink

   great conversation.

   Now I have to pop off and run my Twitter strategy to track the robo calls made by outside forces in VT about gay marriage!

   http://thinkdodone.typepad.com/ccd/2009/04/national-organization-for-marriage-making-robos-in-vermont.html

   Seriously, almost 2-3 times a week, because of Twitter, I am able to “focus in” on a Robo call “outbreak”.

   I use Twitter to ID Robos are being made.

   I contact Twitter users who are talking about robos and ask them for more details: who, when, caller id, do they have the audio?

   I then use these Tweets to contact traditional and new media to drive the story line in the media.

   Fun and a lot of work.

   Shaun

10. Ivan Boothe | 02-Apr-09 at 3:45 pm | Permalink

    I think some of this might just be using different terms for the same things. But I also worry about the “technology will save us” meme that I think organizers (and especially organizers with a computer) sometimes fall into.

    Look at it this way: Why were the campaigns you cite using Twitter, and not (say) Identi.ca, FriendFeed, Jaiku, Ping.fm — or, for that matter, Facebook statuses or MySpace bulletins?

    There’s a tendency, I think, to *collapse* the strategy and the tool. To say “this is what we want to accomplish, and, hey! there’s a tool that will do that!” and then equate the tool with the strategy. But they’re still separate thought processes and separate stages in developing a campaign.

    Undoubtedly Twitter *was* the right tool in those cases (especially versus the less-used microblogging services) but without considering the strategy apart from the tool, you risk overlooking ways to run more effective campaigns on other platforms — or augmenting a campaign using multiple platforms.

    And, worse, you risk giving people feel-good activism that quenches their desire for social change without actually moving you closer to a concrete goal or putting any pressure on powerholders.

    I don’t mean to be overly critical, and I agree with you at the effectiveness of the campaigns you talk about, and I love using Twitter for my own campaigns. But in my opinion the strategy *always* comes first, before figuring out how the tool fits in. And I think you actually are considering the strategy, you’re just collapsing it into the decision about the tool.

    Political pamphlets, phone trees and jam-the-faxes must have seemed like strategies in and of themselves when each technology first came out. But without a campaign strategy deploying those tools in an effective way, I don’t think they would end up being effective.

11. Paula | 02-Apr-09 at 3:54 pm | Permalink

    I think that there is just a semantic difference here — I don’t see what Jon and Colin are saying as being that diametrically opposed. Twitter is one of a number of communications and engagement channels that can be used. Sometimes it’s the best one; sometimes it’s not. I read what Colin is saying to mean that if you use Twitter, you should know why you’re using it and how to use it effectively, and not just because it’s cool or the latest thing.

    For example, I’m a pretty avid personal user of Twitter, and I understand and have participated in several types of usage, whether it’s livetweeting a conference, reporting or commenting on something live while it’s still happening, participating in a Twitter chat, spreading the word on a campaign, and sharing mundane and probably not-so-interesting details about my personal life.

    I’ve held off on using it as a tool for my nonprofit organization, yet (that’s about to change) because: a) most of my audience isn’t on Twitter and doesn’t get it; b) due to limited staffing, I’ve found it difficult to keep up with on a regular basis; and c) I haven’t had a real goal in mind — something I wanted to accomplish by using it. And I think that’s what Colin is talking about — using it under these conditions might not be the best use of my limited time and resources.

    So adding a user name to GoFollow and adding a button to my website indicating that we’re on Twitter might make us look cool, but doesn’t really accomplish that much. But I’m on the path to solving a-c above, and so you will see us on Twitter soon, as the result of strategic thought — not jumping on the bandwagon.

12. Zoey | 02-Apr-09 at 3:58 pm | Permalink

    Jon,

    Twitter is definitely NOT a strategy. It’s a tool. One piece within an overall strategy.

    You continue to have the same problem over and over and over again in all of the campaigns that you get involved with. You use silly metrics to measure success, metrics that have very little meaning — like how much media attention a campaign/effort gets. Well Jon, that’s also just one piece. And contrary to popular belief, not all media is good media.

    Start measuring the success of a campaign/effort by its ability to either reach its goals or not — and then you might find yourself getting somewhere. Right now, you’re on a hamster wheel.

13. Julie | 02-Apr-09 at 4:04 pm | Permalink

    I think, technically, Twitter would be a tactic rather than a strategy. So for Ask the President, the strategy would be “promote progressive questions entered on Ask the President so they get asked at the press conference.” The tactic would be “use twitter to spread the word, etc.”

    But that’s just words–denotation, if you will. When I hear someone say “Twitter is not a strategy,” I hear them denying twitter as an effective anything: strategy, tactic, tool, what-have-you. So I think your article does address what they actually mean, technical definitions be darned.

    If I were your editor on this piece, I’d recommend simplifying the lead sentence of each paragraph, perhaps to say, “In xyz campaign, the goal was abc, and Twitter helped us achieve it by 123.” Then go into specifics.

    Ultimately, whether you call Twitter a strategy, a tactic, or a tool, it’s silly to say its impotent to help achieve a goal, and that’s your real point.

    ~Julie

14. Jason Mogus | 02-Apr-09 at 4:19 pm | Permalink

    It’s a connection channel.

    Orgs and co’s that use it to “message out” will lose people, just like their ads, newsletters, direct mails have.

    PEOPLE who use Twitter to share, collaborate, respond to and support OTHERS will grow more connected to their community, learn and know (and feel?) more, and, when the time is right, see their ideas / campaigns / calls to action spread widely and instantly through networks of influence they didn’t even know existed and most certainly don’t control.

    I love twitter and (most) everything it represents. I mean, the distraction / non-presence / narcissism thing is real and it’s hard, but I think most people who dismiss it are missing the experience of just how darn fine this connection thing can be when you connect to things that are vital and authentic.

    —
    Jason Mogus :: CEO
    Communicopia Internet Inc.

15. Matt Lockshin | 02-Apr-09 at 4:51 pm | Permalink

    Jon,

    I disagree with you and I don’t see how the evidence you put forth really does what you seem to think it does to support your contention. I think it would be helpful if you explicitly articulated the relationship between the evidence you put forward and your conclusion. In what way does it show that Twitter is a strategy?

    Setting the Adriel Hampton example aside for the moment, your evidence seems to largely fall into two categories: 1) Twitter is an effective tool for viral marketing and 2) Twitter campaigns can generate a lot of activity on Twitter. The relevance of petition signatures in our assessment of a Twitter campaign only matters because the organizations running the campaign had decided that petitions were an effective way of making change. The same is true with respect to website hits. The use of Twitter was entirely mechanistic in these examples and not strategic. Furthermore, the relevance of the number of Twitter followers gained or tweets made during a Twitter campaign is completely unclear to me, and seems to beg the question.

    The Adriel Hampton example is a little bit more complex for a number of reasons. First of all, the article that supposedly doesn’t mention him does mention him (maybe this changed since you wrote it), but the relevance of that article is completely mysterious to me. So what if the article by California Beat (a new online entity that has no established reputation or special level of authority on the subject) doesn’t mention him? And what’s the relationship between that and the fact that other entities, with a longer history of focusing on Congressional races, does mention him? Part of the reason he was mentioned (for example, by Hotline on Call) is because he was the first Congressional candidate to announce his candidacy via Twitter. Since the Hotline column in question focuses on the use of Twitter, it’s hardly surprising they noted the historic development. But all of the mentions you link to were on blogs (contra what you wrote, the Sacramento Bee did not have an article on him, but instead mentioned him in a part of their website called Capitol Alert). All of that exposure on blogs is probably of very limited utility to his quest to win an election. You might say that it was part of an earned media strategy, but earned media is usually relevant only insofar as it is seen by folks who actually live in the district. But at best the use of Twitter was a cagey tactic to get some earned media.

    You also quote Adriel Hampton about why he’s using Twitter, and it seems like he’s using Twitter as a way of doing direct voter contact. But in that case, it’s only one way (and probably not the most effective way) of engaging in direct voter contact.

    I have no doubt that Twitter has its role in political advocacy and organizing, but I just don’t see how what you write is supposed to demonstrate that it’s actually a strategy.

16. EveE. | 02-Apr-09 at 8:44 pm | Permalink

    Ivan’s comments resonated w/ me. I hesitate to interchange “strategy” with “tactics”. Twitter feels more like “tactics” to me. I think your key point re: missing the boat is spot on though.

17. jon | 02-Apr-09 at 10:15 pm | Permalink

    Thanks all for the comments. Erin also had an insightful point in email (quoted with her permission):

    Having defined my understanding from a background of field organizing and early online community building, I would tend to agree with Colin that Twitter is a tactic. Hopefully within a larger strategy of community building and messaging online.

    From that background, I can certainly see why it makes sense to view Twitter as a tactic.

    But that’s not my background. I’m a strategist, and some of the general areas I’ve focused on are diversity, the interactions between intersectionality and social networks, and gender-based communication. From all of those perspectives, Twitter has a lot to recommend it as a strategy.

    #p2 started with explicit statements of Twitter as a strategy: for “flash actions” and to engage with communities marginalized by the progressive blogosphere. Maybe you don’t think those are important goals; maybe you don’t think we have a chance at success. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a strategy.

    It’s getting late, so quick responses to some other points — apologies if I missed any:

    – Twitter can also be a tactic and a connection channel. it’s not an either-or thing

    – Matt and Zoey, you’re largely talking about whether Twitter can be successful as a strategy. that’s a separate question, but briefly: #dontgo’s activism led to Congress getting called back into session and the legislation they were backing passing. #motrinmoms led to Motrin withdrawing their ad within 24 hours. #tcot has succeeded in establishing the media narrative of “conservatives rule on Twitter”. so yes, it can be successful.

    – Paula, I read Colin’s statement that “Twitter is not a strategy” as opposed to my statement that it is. I also see his condescending statements toward the quality of discourse on Twitter as completely counter to what I’m saying. I do agree that using Twitter, whether as a tool or tactic or communication channel or strategy, should be approached with forethought.

    – Ivan, none of the other social network platforms you discuss have Twitter’s mix of demographics, functionality (in particular hashtags), and rapidity of communication — all of which are required for the scenarios I’m talking about. In terms of past technologies, I’d say that at various times fax, talk radio, SMS, political pamphlets, have all been successfully used as strategies. I do agree that there’s a risk of viewing itechnology as a panacea, but “Twitter” incorporates more than just that: it’s the people who use it, the culture, the norms and traditions, and the emerging language.

    – Julie and Matt, thanks for the feedback; good suggestions for rewrites, and my mistake overlooking the reference to Adriel in the article.

    Good discussion all, thanks much — please continue!

    jon

18. Steve Elliott | 02-Apr-09 at 10:26 pm | Permalink

    I’m enjoying this fascinating discussion, even as I’m still in the process of forming an opinion on the matter.

    As it stands now, I’m leaning towards Jon’s view that Twitter is indeed a strategy; albeit a very hit-and-miss strategy, and one which is in its infancy.

19. e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics » Strategy or Tool? On the Metaphysics of Twitter | 03-Apr-09 at 10:50 am | Permalink

    […] with a reply to the Twitter-is-not-a-strategy e.politics piece from last week: he contends that Twitter IS a strategy, and he goes to some lengths to imply that I’m not giving the micro-blog…. From there, the discussion took off in the comments section of Jon’s site and on at least […]

20. DrDigiPol | 03-Apr-09 at 11:18 am | Permalink

    At the risk of being inflammatory (no offense meant Jon)… come on folks… aren’t we past the days when we refer to a tool (or a communication channel) as a strategy? The internet is not a strategy. A blog is not a strategy. And neither is Twitter.

    These are channels for communication and we develop strategies for using them.

    I am a big fan of Twitter. And I am always developing strategies for using it. But that is fundamentally different from saying Twitter is a strategy. Twitter can be used to inform people about ideas, promote events, engage conversations, and mobilize actions. And for each of these you can adopt a variety of strategies and tactics (using hashtags to engage different groups, linking groups together, etc.).

    I also believe, as McLuhan wrote, that technology is not ideologically neutral. Tools are not just tools that can be used for any purpose. Each communication tool has its own ideology. For example, socially dynamic tools like Twitter are inherently more democratic than broadcast tools like TV. Thus, strategies for Twitter that exploit the democratic nature of the channel will work better than command and control strategies. And vice versa for TV.

    What makes Twitter inherently democratic? Well, 1) generally anyone can follow anyone else and 2) no one can restrict who uses a hashtag or how they use it. What makes TV inherently undemocratic? 1) only the producers of the content control the content, 2) access to the channel is restricted, and 3) no feedback loop.

    OK… so the ideology of Twitter constrains what strategies work on it (or at least work better), but the bottom line is still: Twitter is not a strategy, but a channel that allows us to pursue a variety of strategies for how we use it.

21. jon | 03-Apr-09 at 11:19 am | Permalink

    Paula followed up on my last comment in email, and gave me permission to quote her here even though this played into my strategy:

    Okay, let’s take another example…with connections to the current debate:

    Is having a blog a strategy? Most would say no, as the mere fact that someone has a blog means nothing without quality content, user engagement, consistent posting, etc. A blog is a tool, a means of communication, a particular way of communication that has its strengths (easy self-publishing, the ability to build community, etc.) and weaknesses (requires near constant tending, no outside editing as gatekeeper for quality, hard to break into the upper echelon of influencers, etc.).

    So, take a blog that’s pretty well-known and established, and is one of the things that its author is most known for. Say something provocative at that blog that challenges some strongly held views and stirs up some s&*t. Given that it will attract some attention and provoke some comments, that’s starting to look more like a strategy (and one that Colin all too frequently deploys — must be his Texas roots.)

    Then take someone else that is also well-known in the community, and attack the opinions of the other blogger, focusing on a point of difference (whether it’s major or minor, semantic or real, becomes itself part of the debate). Think Mac vs. PC, Drupal vs. Joomla, Facebook vs. MySpace — you pretty much know that’s going to get people going. Hmmm…maybe that’s a strategy too.

    Next, take the debate beyond the individual blogs by posting to a listserv filled with people who care about this stuff, which amplifies the debate far beyond the two blogs involved. Boy, that smells like a strategy. And then when you respond to every comment on the blog and on the list, which causes people to get even more entrenched and engaged in the debate…that’s another strategy too.

    By using the various tools: the blog itself, blog comments, and the listserv, you’ve amplified the conversation far beyond Colin or Jon’s original post, which was the goal, wasn’t it? Both of you have more traffic to your blog, you’ve caused people to think about your opinions and form judgments about right and wrong, and added to your social capital/whuffie among people who care about progressive politics.

    So…if you view Twitter the way Colin views it, you have a lot of people using it and not accomplishing their goals, because they either didn’t have goals to begin with, or are maybe using a tool that is ill-suited to accomplishing what those goals would be if they had been articulated. Plus, he’s bored by all the mundane personal details he would learn about his friends if he ever read his stream, which he admittedly rarely does.

    And if you view Twitter the way Jon views it, you see all of these people using it expertly, coordinating successful campaigns using hashtags, creating community where it didn’t exist, spreading the word about important issues more effectively, creating social capital/whuffie easily and inexpensively, driving traffic from Twitter to blogs and websites, and all these other things that we all acknowledge are good things (although not necessarily the be-all and end-all, depending on what metrics you’re using.)

    You’re both right. You’re both wrong. You’ve both demonstrated the difference between tools, strategy, and outcomes. You’ve both ended up with the outcome you wanted from all this, which is to have all of us think and talk about it, and oh, by the way, visit your blogs and add to the comments.

    Well done, both of you. You don’t even have to agree — it’s much better for your purposes if you don’t.

22. jon | 03-Apr-09 at 11:19 am | Permalink

    Colin Delany’s response is at Strategy or tool? On the metaphysics of Twitter.

23. Colin Delany | 03-Apr-09 at 11:23 am | Permalink

    Thanks Jon! You beat me to it. And thanks for getting the conversation started.

24. k_michael | 03-Apr-09 at 11:27 am | Permalink

    I don’t know who Colin Delany is, so I have no idea “what fraction of [his] potential mental capability” is expressed in *anything* he might write or say. Frankly, the bulk of *most* people’s conversation consists of small talk and idle chit-chat. That isn’t the point, however; the point for a thinking person is to find those with whom one can actually comunicate, exchange ideas, and be intellectually, emotionally, and, dare I say, even spiritually challenged, because in challenge lies growth.

    Regarding my own tweets, I personally do, for the most part, put as much of my “mental capacity” into them as I can fit into the allotted 140 characters (minus @name and hashtag marker name). I tweet to express my thoughts and interestes; to ask questions; to exchange ideas.
    Otherwise, what’s the use? What would be the purpose? Why bother paying for the electricity required to run my computer, if all I’m going to do is the equivalent of exchanging niceties with a store clerk or other stranger regarding the weather?

    Regarding politics, and whether Twitter is a “strategy”, a quick check of Wikipedia offers a succinct definition:
    “A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. ”
    Tactics OTOH are teh utilization of various methods, plans, and/or other tools to achieve specific objectives intended to achieve or further a Strategy.

    Twitter, being a tool or method, is a tactic, not a strategy. The main question, then, is whether it is an *effective* tactic. Until/unless an actualy study is designed and done, and the results analysed, any statement regarding its effectiveness is nothing more than speculation, i.e. mere opinion.

    HTH…!

25. jon | 03-Apr-09 at 12:04 pm | Permalink

    Alan Rosenblatt (aka @drdigipol, founder of the #topprog hashtag) also posted his response as Is Twitter a Strategy? Like, Come On! on K Street Cafe.

26. jon | 03-Apr-09 at 1:10 pm | Permalink

    k_michael makes a good point that not everybody knows the players involved. e.politics describes itself as “a site that focuses on the tools and tactics of Internet politics and online political advocacy” and also offers consulting services, including Colin helping clients “develop specific strategies for particular online tools, including social media.”

    Alan is Associate Director for Online Advocacy at the Campaign for American Progress Action Fund, founder of the Internet Advocacy Roundtable; and teaches Internet Politics and Digital Political Strategies at several universities.

    In Colin’s article about Alan’s introduction of #topprog in late January, he described Alan as “a friend of e.politics”. Colin’s also listed as a contributor on K Street Cafe, the site where Alan just posted. So presumably they know each other.

    Alan has occasionally posted to #p2 but hasn’t participated in any of our chats or the Ask the President work. Colin hasn’t ever posted to #p2 as far as I can tell.

27. jon | 03-Apr-09 at 3:26 pm | Permalink

    Most of the people who have weighed in have characterized Twitter as a tool and tactic … which it is. And it’s also:

    – a communication channel — and a medium that allows you to create multiple channels.
    – a place
    – an emerging language, filled with @, #, RT, and incomprehensible links.
    – a power structure that provides clear examples of gender bias (and probably other dimensions of oppression as well)
    – a company that needs to start generating revenue soon … and the hub of the Twitterverse ecosystem, where all kinds of funding is sloshing around
    – an example of status-based communication that’s so compelling that industry leader Facebook has copied it

    and more, including

    – the people who hang out on Twitter, with a dense concentration of heavily-networked PR, advertising, social media, journalist types, etc., starting becoming connected in “tribes”

    It seems to me the reductionist approach of focusing primarily on any one aspect of Twitter loses out on a lot of possibilities. Sure, it’s a tool. Why stop there?

28. DrDigiPol | 03-Apr-09 at 3:40 pm | Permalink

    Agreed that Twitter is multifaceted, but it is still a multifaceted set of objects (abstract or tangible), where strategy is a process for using objects to achieve a goal. So when I think of Twitter, I still think of strategies to using the object characteristics of Twitter.

    I don’t think we lose anything by not categorizing it as a strategy, rather we gain much by contemplating strategies for using its many facets.

29. k_michael | 03-Apr-09 at 3:55 pm | Permalink

    I’ve read teh comments – I think that Twitter, at least at this point, is pretty much whatever people put into it and want it to be.

    Some people jsut like breezy chat (and there’s nothing inherently worng with that), so that’s what Twitter is to them, a place to chat.

    Some people want to communicate a specific idea, so for them, Twitter is a way to contact a large-ish number of reasonably tech-savvy poeple.

    Some poeple want to exchange ideas, and for them, Twitter is a fast and easy way to do that (which can be enhanced via using Links to outside webpages).

    Some poeple need/want to receive, and share, links about a specific topic – dieting, a particular health condition, companion animals, etc. SO for them, Twitter is a way to exchange those links.

    Communication of any sort is, really, whatever the individual wants it to be. Even art – some poeple create (and/or view) art as soemthing ebstract and emotive; others are interested in a specific idea or feeling or expereince; others use it for political expression; still otehrs use art for religios expression, and so on.

    It’s all communication. So, liek any mode fo communication, one can use Twitter to speak up/out for certain causes, and/or as one tool/tactic to use to further a certain goal.

    Sometimes, I think people become so focused upon a tool or method that they kind-of forget that, in the end, any tool or method is just an extension of the Self – of one’s thoughts, concerns, and so on. Twitter, like art, or writing, or other communication, can, I suppose, be an end unto itself, but mostly, it’s an extension of somethign that a given individual cares about, is interested in, or otherwise is an extension/expression of the Self.

30. myrnatheminx | 03-Apr-09 at 4:19 pm | Permalink

    I agree that Twitter is a tool, even if its the only tool your using. However, I do think the semantics just arent that important as some. I’m having grad school flashbacks that thats not a good thing. Ultimately, I think Jon’s argument is that Twitter shouldnt be dismissed. The fact that is spawned this debate kind of makes the point. Yes, you should have a strategy for any tool you use, and yes you should measures of success defined. I dont see anyone trying to argue the opposite.

31. Adriel Hampton | 03-Apr-09 at 9:24 pm | Permalink

    Wow, quite a discussion you’ve kicked up, Jon! Thanks for the kind look at my Twitter use. Personally, I wouldn’t say it is in itself a “strategy,” but it certainly does lend itself to strategic uses. And, people who doubt the value of Twitter are simply unversed in it’s multitude of uses. I’ve used it to build a blog readership, to connect with the Gov 2.0 community worldwide, to staff and find guest for a radio show, and now to garner national press without a press release. But it’s not an easy tool to use strategically. While 12for12k has raised a lot of money on Twitter, I’ve been unsuccessful on that front and am still considering whether to try a tactical approach to that or simply rely on more traditional money methods. I’ve also found that even getting the attention of a few Twitter celebs is less effective than community building over time for building your cred (I like that, actually). Two things I do really like about Twitter for activism: feed features that allow a campaign to stay live 24-7, and that it’s just simply fun.

32. DrDigiPol | 04-Apr-09 at 8:05 am | Permalink

    More comments about this discussion can be found following my cross posts here: http://www.kstreetcafe.com/is-twitter-a-strategy-like-come-on/.

33. Gregory K. | 04-Apr-09 at 11:28 am | Permalink

    Of possible interest – http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_64/s0904046702617.htm

    I’ve enjoyed reading the comments here and elsewhere, though it’s still unclear to me why Twitter can’t be viewed as a tool, a tactic, a channel, a strategy and other things, as well. Isn’t it just contextual?

34. Mikal Lewis | 05-Apr-09 at 4:07 am | Permalink

    Based on our IM, and Twitter conversations. I can see quite clearly Twitter is a strategy.

    I think those who view it otherwise might could write a book called Google ‘is’ a search engine.

    Sure Twitter ‘is’ a tool, a channel, etc. But just as viewing Google as just a search engine fails to see its broader lessons, seeing Twitter as just a tool fails to see its broader possibilities as well.

    Google as a strategy to me is aligning business incentives with user incentives (unobtrusive text ads), and it is also about the power of critical mass (earning billions one nickle at a time).

    The difficult thing I find with Twitter as a strategy, is it does not yet fit into a neet box of ‘lessons.’ That is probably a good thing though – because it means the business case, so to speak, is still being written.

35. Change the way you ask for help (DRAFT) « Liminal states | 05-Apr-09 at 12:19 pm | Permalink

    […] To explore these general questions, let’s start small with a specific scenario. For an essay I’m working on called Twitter *is* a strategy, I’d like to get broad feedback and discussion about a draft version of a document. There are a lot of people whose perspectives I’d like to hear. How to go about asking them to help me? […]

36. Benjamin Barnett | 06-Apr-09 at 9:27 am | Permalink

    Twitter is clearly a strategy, it has it’s own “unique” followers. It is a tool because it provides “function.” Together, it’s part of a process to achieve “goals.” To the people who are not trying to capitalize on Twitter and just rant and rave … It’s just cool.

37. jen | 06-Apr-09 at 9:50 am | Permalink

    Twitter can be the strategy, or just one part. See what Twitter was able to do for the “End the R-Word” campaign –

    http://newmediastrategies.net/blog/post/social-media-for-social-good-ending-the-r-word/

38. jon | 06-Apr-09 at 9:50 pm | Permalink

    Thanks all for the excellent input. There’s a lot to respond to …

    One of the things making the discussion complex is that we’ve got at least three definitions of strategy:

    – k_michael quoted wikipedia’s definition of “a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.
    – For Alan, it’s a process.
    – I think of strategy as a multi-step approach to increasing the likelihood of and benefit from desirable future outcomes.

    Rather than arguing about it, let’s go with Wikipedia’s — I think it’s broad enough to include both Alan’s and mine. For the sake of this discussion:

    A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.

    In retrospect, I probably should have had that in my original post.

39. jon | 06-Apr-09 at 11:21 pm | Permalink

    It seems to me that the majority of the objections to classifying Twitter as a strategy come down to a few points:

    – Twitter’s a tool and/or a communication channel
    – Many people and organizations don’t use Twitter strategically
    – Twitter’s typically just part of a bigger strategy

    All of these are true. But none of them prevent Twitter from being a strategy as well.

40. jon | 07-Apr-09 at 11:37 pm | Permalink

    From the Telegraph (UK):

    Organisers used the social networking site Twitter to rally opposition to a Communist victory in legislative elections

    At least 10,000 protesters gathered and police fired water cannon but were unable to stop the crowd from breaking into the buildings.

    Of course it’s not just Twitter — in fact, there are apparently only 71 Moldovian Twitter users. Cezar Maroti tweeted “We DON’T have a Twitter Revolution in Moldova. It’s a Social Network Rev. Other SNs are also used:Y!mess Youtube Flickr FB”.

    Evegny Moronov has more in Foreign Policy (1, 2), about what role Twitter is actually playing, including

    2. Moldovans abroad played an important role by participating in the protests remotely by helping to keep the story alive via Twitter. Watching the reaction of the Twittosphere to my own previous post, I saw that a large proporition of users with Romanian-sounding names actually seem to be based elsewhere in Europe. It’s interesting how Twitter has given them an option to participate in the protests remotely by simply “buzzing” about the story.

    3. It really helped that even non-technology people in the U.S. and much of Western Europe are currently head over heels in love with Twitter. It’s really good that the Moldovan students didn’t organize this revolution via Friendster or LiveJournal (which is still a platform for choice for many users in Eastern Europe). If they did, they would never have gotten as much attention from the rest of the world.

    The #pman hashtag has more, including tweets like this one from @CNNSaeed:

    If anyone wants to contact me directly from inside Moldova w/ info, email saeed.ahmed@cnn.com #pman

41. Benjamin Barnett | 08-Apr-09 at 3:28 am | Permalink

    This is a broad question of course … Generally, Follower (up) costs, for non profits should be considered leads. The $$ is in people’s time and their ability to qualify as much as possible how that follower happened and what they (it) does. These are opportunities. I would hope that if a non-profit was using Twitter in an overall outreach campaign or as part of one, they would have a goal(s) in mind.

    Following (up) direct followers is a great idea but is not always genuine. You can move forward in such a way as to say that you will follow people who you have directly influenced to follow you. That opportunity possibility is likely to be higher than the person who just clicked on you to follow. Or, you can say that the person who “opted-in” to your Twitter feed is really interested, for now at least. This is like RSS to me.

    Follow costs seem to focus more on human power and that persons ability to make Twitter relations turn into activists, clients, voters, etc. Engagement is crucial 🙂

42. Ivan Boothe | 08-Apr-09 at 10:50 am | Permalink

    It’s certainly exciting to see technology being used in ways that amplify and extend the impact of movement organizing. I think it’s easy, however, to misread the technology as the *cause* of the movement rather than as simply a tool of it.

    The “real-time coverage” use of Twitter, in the style of TXTMob, can be effective, and can even form part of the organization of a protest, as it did in the case of the Olympic torch. But that’s not a strategy or even a revolution — it’s simply street-level news. And in the case of Moldova, the organizing was happening elsewhere:

    “In fact Twitter did not play that big role. The story is quite simple — young and active bloggers decided to have a flash-mob action, lighting candles and ‘mourning Moldova’ because of Communists victory, which nobody recognized due to the multiple violations before and during the campaign. They agreed on the time and place of the action through the network of Moldovan blogs (blogs aggregator blogosfera.md), and social networks like Facebook/Odnoklassniki, etc.”
    http://frontlineclub.com/blogs/danielbennett/2009/04/the-myth-of-the-moldova-twitter-revolution.html

    In other words, the most effective *tools* to execute the *strategy* in question — organizing opposition to the regime and making it visible to other Moldovans — didn’t include Twitter.

    Jon says above, “It’s really good that the Moldovan students didn’t organize this revolution via Friendster or LiveJournal (which is still a platform for choice for many users in Eastern Europe). If they did, they would never have gotten as much attention from the rest of the world.”

    This perspective is an example of collapsing the strategy and the tool. More specifically: Getting attention from the rest of the world is NOT automatically the objective of any given social change movement.

    Most social change organizers know this. There are moments when you want to focus on building awareness and/or getting media attention, but that’s often not the primary focus of the campaign. In the case of the Moldovan students, it could be that what was most needed was a way to get organizers to identify and strategize with one another — in which case Twitter would have been a very poor (or at least fantastically blunt) tool.

    More of my thinking on Twitter as a tool here:
    http://rootwork.org/blog/2009/04/fire-food

43. jon | 09-Apr-09 at 1:26 pm | Permalink

    Ivan’sThe fire and the food: Why there’s no such thing as a Twitter revolution is certainly worth reading in its entirety. Before I reply about the general strategy issues, I’m going to go into a little detail on the situation in Moldova. Apologies in advance for the length of this comment, but I think it’s worth exploring it fully.

    First of all I want to highlight that this is a complex situation and it’s important not to trivialize it by reducing it to technology. This is likely to be remembered as”the Twitter revolution” in the same way that the 2001 demonstrations in Manila are described as the SMS revolution, I hope that this doesn’t divert the attention from the people involved, the underlying issues, or come across as disrespectful to the activists involved, or to any of the other mechanisms used by the organizers.

    That said …

    My guess is that the organizers had many goals, and getting attention to from western media is almost certainly one for many reasons. @eirenebellatrix said it well:

    #pman international support is crucial right now; the world has to be informed of what’s going on in Moldova – it’s dificult to fight alone

    Start with the morale factor. One of the articles I read talked about copies of the NY Times articles being passed around. I can’t even imagine what that would feel like, to be there and discover that wow, the world is watching … and two-way communication is possible! Not only that, the protestors and many other Moldovans must feel a stirring of pride that they’re at the forefront of 21st century activism. Sure none of this changes the facts on the ground … it’s still incredibly valuable.

    And as Amnesty International and Wired are reporting, the activists involved here are at risk for exercising their civil rights. A spotlight from the international press is potentially one of their strongest protections.

    In terms of directly accomplishing their goals, there’s a lot of room for multinational organizations like OCSE and the EU as well as individual governments to get involved here. Public awareness and public opinion matters a lot; media attention helps influence that.

    So I think it’s reasonable to assume that the protestors have a goal of attention from the outside world. If they came to me as a strategy consultant and asked me how to accomplish this, I’d say “Twitter”.

    Sure the reality would be more complex than that, and you’d need to couple it with other strategies, but the same’s true with any other strategy: first to market, embrace and extend, fast follower, shock and awe …

    A strategy is a plan of action in aid of a goal. International media attention is a goal (although not the only one). Twitter is a strategy.

    jon

44. jon | 11-Apr-09 at 12:34 am | Permalink

    The myth of the Moldova ‘Twitter revolution” by Daniel Bennett (a grad student “researching the impact of blogging and new media on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism”) echoes Cezar Maroti’s point that the the protests were organized uzing a broad array of social media, highlights that a lot of the press coverage mischaracterized Twitter’s role, notes that there were only 100 to 200 Twitter users when the protest started, and firmly declares

    As it stands, the Twitter revolution is a myth.

    Ivan Boothe’s The fire and the food: Why there’s no such thing as a Twitter revolution, on Rootwork and Nancy Scola’s A “Twitter Revolution”? A Second Look at the Uprising in Moldova on techPresident both cite Daniel approvingly dismiss Twitter and think Twitter’s importance in the Moldovan protests is overstated.*

    Evgeny Morozov responds to Daniel in Moldova’s Twitter revolution is NOT a myth on Foreign Policy with some excellent points, including

    In the case of Moldova, it’s possible that Twitter has made much bigger impact on the new media environment outside of (rather than inside) the Twittersphere by simply feeding a stream of blogs, social networks, and text messages with content. In my view, people who point to the low number of Twitter users in Moldova as proof of the mythical nature of the subject have conceptual difficulties understanding how networks work; on a good network, you don’t need to have the maximum number of connections to be powerful — you just need to be connected to enough nodes with connections of their own.

    and

    But to prioritize the internal organizational elements of this story is to entirely miss out on the crucial role that Twitter played in mobilizing the masses outside of and far away from the square (and, in part, getting some of them TO the square in the first place).

    Indeed. My comments earlier in this thread and on techPresident strike a similar tone (1, 2) .

    Ethan Zuckerman’s Unpacking the “Twitter Revolution” in Moldova fits somewhere in between. He describes Daniel’s analysis as “one of the better ones”, although also highlights Twitter’s value as a great tool for providing short news updates, involving supporters outside the country, and getting press attention.** Matt Compton’s Twitter finds its purpose on The Democratic Strategist and Steve Ellis’ Twitter-strations on the rise on Bulletproof blog similarly take a broader view.

    You can probably guess who I agree with. So I’ll give the last word to Evgeny:

    Finally, my original reasoning for dubbing this a “Twitter revolution” rather than a “Grape revolution” was to signify that it’s qualitatively different — mostly because of the role that technology played — from the color revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine. I still think that this is the case — and it’s very hard for me to accept the opposite when I see Twitter still full of buzz around what happened.

    The naysayers here remind of people who insist on claiming that reality doesn’t exist even after knocking their head on the wall — I simply don’t buy into the thesis that it was a CIA-inspired Twitter campaign… It’s kind of surprising to see so many people misunderstand the power of networks in such profound ways.

    jon

    * updated April 12, after the discussions with Ivan below. My apologies for a poor choice of words.

    * leveraging what he bizarrely describes as the “frustratingly predictiable” dynamics of Twitter as a buzz-creator. As I discussed in Lessons from Skittles for poets and activists, I see this as an opportuntiy, not a frustration.

45. jon | 11-Apr-09 at 9:04 am | Permalink

    Ethan commented that Twitter Search doesn’t make it easy to dig into the data … one useful trick for Twitter Search is to play with the max_id in the URL. For example here’s the first batch of posts on #pman, including evisoft’s proposal for the hashtag.

    I’ve collected several of these as well as a bunch of interesting English-language tweets in my Twitter favorites. If anybody has any suggestions on how to turn this into a slideshow, please let me know!

    Also:

    – Twopular’s social network analysis is also interesting, highlighting who’s most active and retweeted. (I believe this only has data from the times when #pman was in the top 10 trends.)

    – http://pman.puk.ro has a text-only view of the last few thousand tweets.

    jon

46. Ivan Boothe | 11-Apr-09 at 9:47 am | Permalink

    I’m disappointed that you thought my post “dismiss[ed] Twitter’s importance.

    I’m confused why you think talking about strategy as a first step somehow devalues Twitter. I think Twitter is a fantastic tool and I’ve said so many, many times — not to mention using it myself for various social change initiatives.

    It just baffles me that social change techies feel threatened when you suggest that they might want to think about how to use their shiny technologies in a strategic way as opposed to blindly — to the point that you get misrepresented as “dismissing” the technology because you don’t agree that it’s perfect to use in any and all situations, strategy be damned.

    To me that’s not social change, that’s fandom. And I really couldn’t care less about the latter.

47. jon | 11-Apr-09 at 10:13 am | Permalink

    Ivan, you don’t say anything positive about Twitter in your post. Instead there’s a lengthy discussion of your view that it wasn’t valuable for the protestors to get the word out to the rest of the world, a suggestion that protestors “failed” at their primary goal of making opposition to the regime visible to other Moldovans, and statements like

    Worse, organizers risk giving supporters feel-good activism that quenches their desire for social change without actually moving the movement closer to a concrete goal, or putting any pressure on powerholders.

    Couple that with a headline like “why there’s no such thing as a Twitter revolution”, and it certainly sounds dismissive to me.

    jon

48. jon | 11-Apr-09 at 11:42 am | Permalink

    AK’s Twitter Terror in Moldova on Sublime Oblivion presents a very different view, and one that we rarely see in the US mainstream media. AK quotes at length from Daniel McAdams’ Moldova’s ‘Twitter Revolution’: Made in America? on LewRockwell.com* and also links to Kurt Nimmo’s Moldova: Twitter or Color Revolution? on Alex Jones’ Prison Planet, before moving on to some very interesting background on the people and issues involved — and the global context of social network activism vs. repressive governments.

    Well worth reading.

    jon

    PS: thanks @siberianlight for the link via #pman

    * for those who don’t know, Lew is part of the “paleo” faction of libertarians, with links to white supremacists.

49. Ivan Boothe | 11-Apr-09 at 12:20 pm | Permalink

    Jon,

    The point is that Twitter was a part of the strategy, but it wasn’t the strategy (which is what it would take, in my opinion, for it to be termed a “Twitter revolution).

    I said this right at the top of my post:

    It’s certainly exciting to see technology being used in ways that amplify and extend the impact of movement organizing. I think it’s easy, however, to misread the technology as the cause of the movement rather than as simply a tool of it.

    I’ve seen lots of fantastic uses of Twitter; I cite several in my post that employed this “reporting from the street” mechanism (G20 protests, Twitter Vote Report, SF Olympic Torch actions), and above I agree with you that the hashtag initiatives paid some useful dividends. But as I say in the post:

    To me, though, this simply shows that Twitter can be an effective tool for a given strategy — but that’s not automatically the case.

    Take the example of G20Voice. They had a clear strategy — put more pressure on powerholders around economic justice issues by taking questions directly from an online audience. They used Twitter to great effect in pursuing that strategy. But Twitter wasn’t the cause of the strategy, Twitter was subordinate to the strategy.

    Now, as Alan Rosenblatt has said (I also linked to him in my post), different technologies do allow for different possible strategies. Naturally, strategies involving television are going to have a different universe of options than those involving Twitter. But the point is still that you start with strategy and then determine the best tools. Twitter is, has been and will continue to be a useful tool, but ONLY when it’s used as part of a strategy.

    Campaigning blindly with a tool — even a bright, shiny, techie tool — without strategy isn’t social change, it’s serendipity.

50. jon | 12-Apr-09 at 9:15 am | Permalink

    Ivan, my comments about you dismissing Twitter’s importance was specifically about its role in Moldova. The point I was trying to make was that Evgeny and I see Twitter as having a strategic role in getting media attention and connecting with international supporters. By contrast you, Daniel, and Nancy all focus primarily on the organizing aspects, and so think it doesn’t rise to the bar of a a “Twitter revolution” .

    In retrospect, it wasn’t a good choice of words. My apologie. I revised it to say “… think Twitter’s importance in the Moldovan protests is overstated.”

    Back to the general strategy question in my next reply.

    jon

51. jon | 12-Apr-09 at 9:23 am | Permalink

    Ivan wrote:

    But the point is still that you start with strategy and then determine the best tools.

    That’s only one way to approach it.

    As a strategist, I start with the goals and the current situation — which includes tools, communication channels, and social networks. I also start with my knowledge of various strategies which might apply: first to market, fast follower, embrace and extend, team of rivals, leverage and develop tools, social network activism, …

    Strategies for the specific situation follow. In my life as a software engineer, I’ve had several huge successes where a tool was the basis of the strategy.* In the activism space, Get FISA Right and Twitter Vote Report are two high-profile examples, where Mike Stark and Nancy Scola/Allison Fine respectively saw that social network sites could be the basis for a strategy.

    At the abstract level, anybody ruling out this kind of approach by insisting that X is NOT a strategy is potentially missing significant opportunities. More concretely …

    If protesters in a situation like Moldova came to me as a strategy consultant and asked me about a strategy for keeping international supporters informed and getting the attention of the media, I’d say “Twitter”.

    What would you say?

    jon

    * PREfix and PREfast, in case anybody’s interested

52. Benjamin Barnett | 12-Apr-09 at 11:55 am | Permalink

    This was my point about the Fax machine being the strategy to “get out into the streets” instigating the moment of the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

    Clearly their is a larger context being considered but to me, a strategy is about achieving a goal. In Moldova it was to take over and run up the EU flag. This was done via Twitter and 100 or so people. It worked …

    In our world where information is real time, we have had a new dynamic for yeas that people who produce “advocacy” via the web are only now catching on…

    Who said a tool is not a strategy? 😉

53. jon | 12-Apr-09 at 9:46 pm | Permalink

    Great analogy to the fax machine, Ben. Another good example is the use of SMS in the “People power” revolution in Manila in 2001.

    > In Moldova it was to take over and run up the EU flag. This was done via Twitter and 100 or so people. It worked …

    Actually I agree with Cezar Marotti that the strategy for organizing the demonstration was multiple social networks (and SMS and in-person) with Twitter playing a relatively small role. Here, I was focusing more on other aspects that complemented this success.

54. jon | 12-Apr-09 at 9:51 pm | Permalink

    In response to an email comment, here’s a quick list of some of the tactics that I’d recommend for a Twitter-based strategy, assuming there’s a little bit of lead time.

    – getting people to sign up for Twitter in advance
    – including Twitter in training sessions (and perhaps classes at schools and universities)
    – having simple printed and online instructions in several languages to help people sign up with Twitter
    – establishing a hashtag
    – establishing a trustable shared account for important announcements, which is important for situations where the hashtag is overloaded and/or troll-infested
    – encouraging bloggers to install “tweet this” buttons on their blogs, and providing instructions to make it easier
    – publicize proxies and Tor, and give instructions on how to use them for when the government shuts off access to Twitter
    – tipping off friendly media that there’s a story in progress about how you’re using Twitter
    – getting volunteers, ideally in international locations, to translate important tweets
    – deploying technology to deal with trolling and disinformation (something tcot, tweetleft, and Twitter Vote Report have all done)

    jon

55. Nicole Maron | 13-Apr-09 at 8:14 am | Permalink

    Sorry to let myself get suckered into a semantic argument, but I feel it’s important since so many people misuse these terms and having discussions around them always require definition.

    For the greatest clarity, I would phrase as follows:

    Twitter is a *tool*.
    The Twitter tasks you list are *tactics*.
    Your *Twitter strategy* is the thoughtful definition of, goals for, and execution of, that collection of tactics as a part of your larger overall strategy.

    Semantics aside, I think your list is terrific and I think it’s a great idea to illustrate the full group of actions that need to happen in order to execute the strategy you described. Well done.

56. ~technopatra tells~ / Is Twitter a “strategy”? | 13-Apr-09 at 8:28 am | Permalink

    […] Pincus started up another brewhaha over the question on his blog and on Progressive Exchange by stating that “Yes, Twitter is a […]

57. jon | 13-Apr-09 at 9:25 am | Permalink

    Thanks for the comment, Nicole. Agreed: the semantics matter.

    Twitter’s a tool, and it’s also a lot more, including a communication channel, a place, an emerging language, a company, a platform, and a community. Sometimes it’s the right thing to focusing primarily on one aspect; other times, the multi-faceted view matters — the tactics I suggested are based in almost all of these.

    And yes, the tactics I described do add up to a “Twitter strategy”. What I’m also saying, though, is that in this case Twitter also makes sense as an overall strategy towards these particular goals. Of course, just as with the other strategies I described (first to market, etc.), this isn’t the only thing going on; and organizations typically pursue multiple intersecting strategies simultaneously.

    Still, using the defintion of strategy as “a plan of action to achieve a goal”, I think Twitter meets the bar. Consider this hypothetical conversation:

    “We need a plan to get media attention and connect with our international supporters. What do you suggest?”

    “Twitter!”

    “Oh really? How would that work?”

    At which point the details follow …

    jon

58. Beth Kanter | 13-Apr-09 at 11:23 am | Permalink

    Interesting debate – there’s a tension between strategy/tools – no matter what the goal is — have seen this across the sector.

    http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/04/twitter-for-activism-tool-vs-strategy-debate-and-a-new-twitter-activism-guide.html

59. Adam | 18-Apr-09 at 6:24 am | Permalink

    Twitter, to me, amounts to at least a strategy for connecting people in new and potentially useful/resourceful ways. And making that connectivity available to many who would not previously have had it. I wish I had come up with it 🙂

    What I would like to see as 2nd generation Twitter would be for it to go onto open-source largely peer-to-peer platform and take it’s future out of the hands of corporocracy

60. #amazonfail and we’re not done yet: links and perspectives « Liminal states | 18-Apr-09 at 11:34 am | Permalink

    […] engaged communities that act presentation that Tracy Viselli and I gave at the #nim09 have more.  Twitter *is* a strategy (DRAFT) and the comments are an attempt to sum it up to a higher […]

61. Cognitive evolution and revolution, part 1: #polc09 and a #diversityfail « Liminal states | 23-Apr-09 at 1:57 pm | Permalink

    […] like Judith Donath and Clive Thompson.   And of course was also a good chance to continue the Twitter *is* a strategy debate and explore progressives’ bizarre resistance to embrace social network activism; more […]

62. Twitter as a tool for activism | 23-Apr-09 at 10:53 pm | Permalink

    […] seasoned practitioners are debating whether a particular social media tool is in and of itself a strategy.   And, while it may be an […]

63. jon | 24-Apr-09 at 1:25 pm | Permalink

    Here’s a comment I left on Colin Delany’s On the Internet, No One Knows Your Revolution is a Dog on techPresident

    There’s a range of opinions about the role of Twitter in the Moldovan revolution, with Evgeny Morozov, Dumitru of Political Moldova and I on one side; Ivan Boothe, Daniel Bennett and Ann Applebaum along with Colin on another. AK of Sublime Oblivion, Ethan Zuckerman in the middle.

    Colin links to himself, Ann and Daniel but not anybody who sees things differently than he does or anybody on the scene. He also doesn’t link to any Eastern European opinions. By leaving them out, he presents a very biased view.

    It’s hard to believe he isn’t at least aware of Ethan’s and Evgeny’s work, and I’m sure he’s read one of my threads that links out to these other sources. It’s very shoddy writing.

    And especially with protesters being beaten and going underground, with at least one person in police custody, calling the revolution a dog is deeply insulting.

    From #pman’s pespective, it becomes a lot clearer if you think of a Twitter hashtag as a place or a tribe. The same’s true for for the Moldovan protestors in general. That doesn’t make it okay.

    At the #polc09 reception I talked with Colin about why his language is being interpreted as hate speech directed at Twitter users. His position was roughly that he didn’t see it that way, so anybody he offended was wrong, and he didn’t care what they thought. This is another good example, and it’s disappointing to see techPresident publish it.

    jon

    Update, April 27: There are some great perspectives in the techPresident thread from Cezar Maroti and punctdevedere. There was also a brief discussion on Twitter: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

64. jon | 25-Apr-09 at 10:45 am | Permalink

    I tweeted my comment to Colin and Micah. They didn’t reply. Maybe they’re not tracking their @-messages on Twitter. Maybe they are and haven’t thought through how it looks to everybody on the #pman channel when they don’t even bother to acknowledge the existence of this point of view. Disappointing.

    jon

    Update, April 26: Micah replied, and I continued the discussion.

65. jon | 27-Apr-09 at 8:10 am | Permalink

    I tweeted the techPresident thread about the protests in Moldova to @siberianlight, @evgenymorozov, @cezarmaroti, and @ethanz. There are now some great comments from Cezar and punctdevedere. There was also a brief discussion on Twitter: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

    What’s really cool here is that I’m having a discussion with the “domain experts”: people who have deep knowledge of the protests and the general situation in Moldova.

    It’s also a great example of a point I made in Cognitive evolution and revolution: #polc09 and a #diversityfail: marginalized voices can collaborate effectively via hashtags. Colin didn’t quote or link to any Eastern Europeans in has article on Moldova; he also ignored the two security experts who have written on the topic (me and Evgeny). We knew each other via Twitter thanks to our shared membership in #pman. We communicated on Twitter and while the power is still asymmetrical — we’re in the comments, Colin has the main post and the link from Daily Digest — it’s substantially more balanced than it was before on the blog. And on the #pman hashtag, our perspectives are dominant.

66. jon | 27-Apr-09 at 8:41 am | Permalink

    Charlotte-Anne Lucas’ The Twitters tells the story describing the wrapup presentation from the International Society of Journalists is another proof point which illustrates language and geography diversity:

    This slideshow is not particularly linear, although I did “group” the Twitters around ideas: First, the back channel conversation, then the collaborative layers being added by the audience around the world, then the discussion of business models for news, then the discussion of non-linear multimedia storytelling. Last, I grouped together comments around the main theme of collaborating the news and news as a conversation.

    Besides telling and interpreting and adding to the conference story, the Twitters told their own stories, including a matter-of-fact, but reverberating comment on the lack of diversity on the panels.

67. jon | 27-Apr-09 at 8:44 am | Permalink

    The Cognitive evolution and revolution presentation I gave at Politics Online discussed Twitter — and specifically hashtags — as a strategy for diversity. The backchannel discussion illustrates a successful application of this strategy.

    The comment stream there describes another successful result of Twitter (and hashtags) as a strategy. Here’s a a summary of what happened:

    On Friday, Brian Wallace’s list of 24 daily Twitter memes on Mashable left out #women2follow. Denise Graveline (aka @dontgetcaught of The Eloquent Woman) tweeted about it. @digitalsista retweeted it to #p2 as a #diversityfail. Allyson Kapin (aka @WomenWhoTech, founder of #women2follow) retweeted. So did many others. Mashable reacted quickly and added it.

    Kudos to Mashable for the quick response … and to Twitterers for helping create a #diversitywin! Here’s the tweetstream….

    The results here speak for themselves. Within two days, with the aid of the existing hashtag-based tribes, the new #diversityfail/#diversitywin hashtags had their first success — and one that reinforced another diversity-focused hashtag.

    Denise added:

    I tweeted in part to call them out and to say, in effect, “not visible to you, maybe, but visible to me and others.” Didn’t know about #diversityfail as a hashtag, but am glad others pounced and delivered.

    One thing I’ve observed (and like) about Twitter is that it is naturally random and organic. So we can assume plenty of people, without intent, don’t know about all sorts of things. At the same time, inserting ourselves in the larger discussion is critical…. That’s why this discussion, sharing and reinforcement are so important, not only amongst ourselves, but with our circles, being the bridges Jill spoke about.

    Indeed.

    As I said in the other thread:

    So no doubt at this point all the data-driven guys who don’t get Twitter’s importance will say “Wow, Denise, Jill, Shireen, Allyson, Jen, Jon and everybody else, you’re right! Thanks for helping us understand! Twitter hashtags *are* a powerful force for empowerment for marginalized communities, just as you’ve been saying! We will change our behavior in light of this! And I guess this means we should try to understand Jon’s view that Twitter is a strategy rather than mocking it!”

    A guy can dream, can’t he?

    jon

68. Chisinau: exista o revolutie Twitter? | Sorin Tudor | 02-Jun-09 at 6:27 am | Permalink

    […] Jon Pincus incerca sa argumenteze ca a comunica pe Twitter ar reprezenta o strategie politica. O insemnare care l-a determinat pe Matt Lockshin sa reactioneze Nu am nicio indoiala ca Twitter are rolul sau […]

69. jon | 14-Jul-09 at 10:58 am | Permalink

    Recently I’ve been thinking of strategy from a entrepeneurial perspective. And guess what? Twitter is one of our strategies.

    Here’s an excerpt from an explanation-in-progress about why:

    Initially, we see Twitter as a key way of engaging with likely initial users: people in small and medium businesses who have a lot of meetings with clients (or other contacts) from different organizations. The barrier to participation is much lower on Twitter than elsewhere, so it’s a natural way of getting input from people about where their pain points are today — and about what works, too, so we can make sure our tools support a variety of best practices. As we ramp up and start wanting to get more attention, the PR, social media, and press density on Twitter will be a major advantage. And they’re all potential customers to boot!

    There are other good reasons for a Twitter strategy in this situation as well. More here.

70. Benjamin Barnett | 14-Jul-09 at 1:27 pm | Permalink

    Ahhh! You said Pain points! 🙂

    Has it always been a strategy from a business (ROI) stand point? or a user generation / product (Brand / Product Marketing) strategy stand point?

    Double 🙂

71. Liminal states :: A #diversitywin as an opportunity: Women talking with women (and some guys too) at the Women Who Tech Telesummit | 13-Sep-10 at 10:41 pm | Permalink

    […] groups of people with a few hundred or a few thousand followers who can work together effectively. Yay […]

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