Live-tweeting a political event: what worked, and what didn't
One of the nice things about the Internet world, as compared to the media space I grew up with as a kid in the Sixties, is that we can all talk with each other. When I post an article here on ZDNet, for example, you can comment and I can respond. Sometimes those comments are fascinating and deep, sometimes they’re rude and shallow, but they turn this into a two-way discussion and always add value.
A few months ago, when the iPhone 4S was announced, we ZDNet bloggers planned to participate in a live discussion using a web service we subscribe to. Apparently, there was so much traffic, the service went down. Since I was already following the announcement, I’d already brewed a fresh cup of coffee, and I’d already put on my fancy office sweatpants, I decided to turn to Twitter and live-tweet the event instead.
What I found surprising and gratifying was that as I tweeted my observations, others retweeted them, still others replied to me, and I was able to retweet their observations as well. It became much more of a social gathering, an actual event, rather than just me, sitting quietly in front of my computer screen, talking to pixels.
Saturday night, I was comfortably on my couch getting ready to watch the South Carolina election returns, and I decided to try tweeting my observations. Because I was on the couch and comfortable, I didn’t want to bring over my laptop or even the iPad. I just wanted to talk. So I decided to see if Siri on the iPhone 4S was up to a night of live-tweeting.
It worked surprisingly well. Of course, there was one point where I tweeted something that made no sense, because what Siri heard and sent out was quite different from what I intended. Our own @JPerlow responded “Siri is like having an autistic howler monkey as your personal assistant” — and, to some extent, that’s true.
But I again had the very interesting feeling of sharing the experience of the event with lots of friends. So, as I started thinking about how I wanted to cover yesterday’s State of the Union, my wife recommended I invite all of you to join me in the live-tweet event Tweet of the Union.
Last night, too, turned out really well. I again had that feeling of being part of a conversation, part of a gathering, rather than just opining on it from afar. I could also weave your comments into the discussion, so I was able to effectively “publish” a stream on the topic that contained many voices, many ideas, and many perspectives.
Over the space of about two hours, I tweeted a message about once every 90 seconds or so. By the time I was done, I’d shared about 100 individual thoughts, on all aspects of the discussion, and from a lot of individual voices besides my own.
What follow are some of the lessons I’ve learned about doing a live-tweet event, and some tips you might want to keep in mind if you do one yourself.
