Premature Obituaries Part 2: The Case For Twitter

As the new year begins, I’m going to pick up where I left off last month, discussing another media platform that is being prematurely written off by the pundits—Twitter.

For years, when I’ve discussed social media in my Business of Film class at Columbia, I have been surprised at how few of my students pay any attention to Twitter. When I quiz them further, it seems that the reason they are not on the platform is that they’ve been scared by what they’ve heard about the toxic environment they are told exists in Twitter. This, of course, was long before the takeover by Elon Musk, which has now created a narrative that is scaring even existing users away.

With Musk allowing some previously banned people back on the platform, and messing around with various ways to increase revenue, fear of Twitter has people predicting its demise and scaring users into abandoning it. Here are some reasons why I think we should all stick it out—and perhaps more controversially, why folks who have never used it should get started now. Continue reading “Premature Obituaries Part 2: The Case For Twitter”

The Hierarchy of Contemporary Communication

I’m constantly amazed at how many people have such a hard time catching on to the various forms of available communication, and don’t realize what is appropriate usage for each of them. There are ways of reaching out to people that require very little research to find out an address, and those are the places least likely to get a response. On the other hand, one can easily abuse having access to someone’s cell phone number or email address. For what it’s worth, here is my assessment of the priority given to the various forms of communication…

1. The Telephone: Yes, you read that right. The phone is still the best way to reach out to someone with urgency. I went to a conference recently where they put up a slide that said, “You can’t get milk from a cow by sending an email.” If you need an urgent answer, pick up the phone. Continue reading “The Hierarchy of Contemporary Communication”