For something that’s relatively innocuous, Twitter certainly gets its share of attention. The latest buzz about the social networking micro blog service is that its tweety essence might be headed to the television.
According to rumors on the Web — and no doubt multiplied and perpetuated via tweets — Twitter is in a production deal to become a television show where contestants would track down celebrities using Twitter and tweets. Besides the fact that this sounds like stalking and these so-called celebrities, if they really are celebrities, don’t take kindly to stalking, this isn’t earth shattering news for television and it’s certainly not the next level of interactive television.
I call it brand entertainment. It’s product placement — like all those Cisco devices on 24 and Subway on Chuck. It’s Twitter marketing. All you need do is substitute the name T-Mobile with Twitter and the story isn’t all that exciting. There’s nothing new or interesting that integrates it into the linear programming; people get cell phones and go out and track down celebrities as they leave messages on their Twitter sites.
Sounds kind of like voting with your phone for the next American Idol, doesn’t it? It’s about as exciting as watching some people with nothing better to do try to find celebrities who want to be found by using their cell phones. Hey, that’s exactly what it is.
It’s not interactive TV. It’s not the congealing of audiences onto one screen. It’s still multi-screen and there’s nothing new or interesting about the multi-screen experience; even movie theaters have multiple screens and every home is equipped with a TV, a PC and a cell phone. It’s when you bring those three devices together on one screen that it gets interesting.
Now, if they wanted to build an application that surrounds the linear feed with some Twitter UI, that would be exciting. They don’t. So there’s no reason to get excited. Twitter is not about to change television. If anything, it’s just about to change the way celebrities are stalked.
