140 Character Confab: Listening To and Learning About Twitter
By Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 6/19/2009 8:09:00 AM
There were two book panels at the recent 140 Characters Conference, a two-day convention held in New York focused on the pervasive influence of Twitter on seemingly everything, but it became clear that the specific content of those 2 panels—indeed all of the panels at event—was a secondary consideration. The 140 Characters conference, named after Twitter's limit of 140-letter messages, was more of a revival meeting, a chance for true believers to testify to the power of social media and open access to information in the digital age and that media’s potential to change and enhance virtually every aspect of contemporary personal and commercial culture. |
| (l. to r.) Book panel moderator Russ Marshalek, Richard Nash, Ami Greko and Ryan Chapman |
Organized by internet impresario/activist Jeff Pulver, 140conf was the event-equivalent of a Twitter feed. Panels were 15-20 minutes long—although the contentious News panel stretched to 30 minutes after NBC anchor Ann Curry energized the crowd—and gave the effect of a Twitter feed streaming along with bite-sized but effective comments on the topics at hand. It seemed that just as panels got started they were over and organizers would blare the soundtrack to Exodus when a panel’s time was up. It was frustrating but entertaining and the enforced Twitter-like brevity of the panels did serve to focus panelists (and the audience) on the topics at hand, driven by the fear of being cutoff mid-comment.
But social change and open access to information through Twitter and other social media was the driving topic and book publishing and its discontents had an opportunity to rant and rail against the status quo. The first book panel featured novelist Kaylie Jones; HarperStudio associate publisher Debbie Steir and books blogger/Tweeter extraordinaire Ron Hogan, who all proclaimed that “everyone pretty much agrees that publishing is broken but we keep doing the same things over and over.”
Jones is a Twitter-newbie of two months after resisting encouragement from her husband to try it. But once onboard, she says she was transformed. Indeed she confessed to a having “a crisis about publishing,” that was somewhat resolved because of Twitter. “Through Twitter I’ve met great fiction readers, people who love the written word. Twitter has been one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.” Steir outlined the HarperStudio model—no advances over $100K and 50% split of sales between publisher and author—as an alternative to the old publishing model and she noted the need to deliver information in whatever fashion people want it, be it through phones, computers or “old fashioned books.” She also emphasized the primary role of authors in promoting their books in the new era: “the publisher’s role is to educate the author and give them digital tools. They can’t just deliver a manuscript and expect that we’ll make it a bestseller.”
The next publishing panel featured former Softskull publisher Richard Nash, something of a Twitter/social media all-star, along with Ami Greko and Ryan Chapman from Macmillan digital marketing. Unlike the notorious SXSW publishing panel that featured panelists mostly unversed in social media, this panel was full of very wired publishing revolutionaries. “Twitter will not save publishing,” said Nash, who made a distinction between books and the publishing business, “and publishing shouldn’t be saved.” Nash was quick to note that “there’s nothing wrong with the book itself. On social media sites, books are usually a signifier for compatibility. It’s more likely that books can save Twitter.” Indeed Greko said that Twitter has enabled her to find the people within traditional publishing houses that want to try something different. “People work in silos in publishing; in very separate functions. But Twitter has enabled us to break down the walls between roles and find people who want to work together. You can use it to inject newness into old institutions and make changes.”
But the specific problems and solutions to publishing or to news or even to dating—looking for an alternative to online dating services, Tweeter/video blogger Marlooz outlined how she twittered and streamed a live video-feed of a first date she had to 200 followers over the web—was simply a way to highlight the pervasive influence that these new technologies will have on people’s lives. In his comments Pulver called the new Twitter-connected world, the “hyper-connected state” and a product of “new media and old media fusing into what we call the now media.” Pulver’s point is that rather than isolating people in a separate rooms in front of computer screens, digital media is “democratizing access to information,” connecting the world in a very personal and intimate fashion and creating opportunities for all kinds of stuff—if you’re creative.
Despite all the sappy talk of sharing, community and personal connection around time and space and technology, the conference was also evidence of an explosion of entrepreneurial business activity meant to enhance, extend, monetize and analyze Twitter. But even the hard-core business people on the panels cautioned against forcing a commercial culture on Twitter and emphasized the need to use Twitter, “to listen.” During the panel on using Twitter in business, Adweek digital editor Brian Morrisey and others urged marketers to use Twitter to enhance customer service and connect with customers without pushing product on them, “Don’t always be selling.”
