(English Version)Twitter: The victory of Relevance

As I promised in the previous post, here is the translated article. Enjoy!

Twitter: The victory of Relevance
Written by Plinio Okamoto – April 19th 2009

Some Love it, the great majority hate it. Today, If there is an opinion polarizing social network, it is called Twitter.

Who could imagine that this 140 characters limited communication tool would stand a chance? Well, Twitter usage is growing fast and had an astonishing 700% growth last year.

And for the first time ever in the online activities rank – developed by Ibope Nielsen, the e-mail usage was surpassed by social media.

So the e-mail is dead?

E-mail was victim of it´s own qualities: easy to use, quick, has global reach and, most important, it is quite inexpensive. Spamming was a natural step. The unsolicited messages through e-mail, also known as SPAM, represents today almost 94% of the information that circulates around the web.

SPAM floods mail boxes with irrelevant content, bringing the risk of hidden softwares that are programmed to steal banking passwords and infecting computers worldwide. All that combined with the lack of people´s time, elevated the e-mail subject´s importance. A quick glimpse through the subject list is enough to eliminate mosto f the undesireable messages.

E-mail subject might be compared to the Twitter post.

The smartphones and their ability to access internet anywhere are a true modern wonder. However, despite the design efforts, keyboard buttons tend to be tiny and unconfortable. Therefore, answering e-mails in a short way is quite usual and, for the receiver, the message will not sound disrespectful if accompanied by the famous “From my Blackberry” footer. Unintentionally, those people were posting twits. By the way, it´s quite common to realize the entire message could fit into the e-mail subject.

When it comes to Twitter, there is a great difference: we choose to receive many posts from people you have a degree of relationship. And the posts may sound silly and trivial. Like real conversations, isn´t it? The sum of that information gives us a broaden picture of what is going on with the ones we care or have interest. Despite critics saying that Twitter is only about irrelevant content, I believe that the right issue to be asked is: Irrelevant to Who?

If I choose to follow a person, I will do it by the interest in the universe that surrounds him: books, websites, backstage info, all kind of social and cultural behavior. It also works as a social aggregator where experiences shared in public allow us, post by post, to be closer to friends and even celebrities.

And when what is relevant becomes irrelevant?

Human relations are dynamic. If someone starts to be irrelevant just use the unfollow button and the posts from that person will automatically stop to be sent to you. Simple like that.

And if you ever lose interest in Twitter, unfollow.

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About the author:
Plinio Okamoto is the Creative Director of RAPP Brazil and professor at Miami Ad School/ESPM.
E-mail: plinio@gmail.com