There has been much speculation lately- is twitter going to die because of the SXSW overload?
Believe it or not …As much as we might think that the whole world has been at SXSW this past week, a lot of us are just back at our own homes and jobs, trying to get some work done. But the learning does not have to stop, does it. Like every conference, talk, session that I have followed through twitter ever single time, I tried to follow SXSW too – by doing this. Only, it did not work very well this time.Almost 500 #sxsw tweets in 15 mins is way too many for my “already simultasking human mind” to follow – let alone decipher and learn from.
So what to I do? Operation A B O R T. Stop following #sxsw. Quit.
Well, that is a lie, right? Can you really escape #sxsw at all? Operation A B O R T lasted for a few hours, if even that.
Very soon, I started to notice people talking about “twitter overload”. Loads of them actually. A lot of people felt the way I did, apparently.
This is too much. Way too much to keep track of. Is twitter useless? Is twitter not living up? What should people do? Are they over utilizing the hash tag? Should they tweet about being in the hotel/airport or no? What is right? What is wrong? And will twitter crumble and die under this pressure?
As I read more and more about this – I also realized that while I agreed and disagreed with a lot of these perspectives, I had devised my own way of working around this mental/information overload. And it mattered less and less that twitter was getting overloaded and twitter might DIE a slow death and this was the beginning …
Eventually, I had followed a pattern – the same pattern that I follow single time I am overwhelmed with information. The same pattern a lot of people follow when they face a brain-overload. A very basic but learned set of human responses?
(I do not intend to make insignificant the #sxsw overload, on the contrary – I only show the parallels and present a a possible framework to understand it.)
1. First response – ABORT : When the system is overwhelmed, step back.
I turned away from the #sxsw twitter search page as a first reaction. Did not even make sense to try to sit there and stare at something that is just not conducive to learning.
2. Then, revisit with manageable overload: Come back, prepared for initial overload and a plan to manage it.
Read about the twitter overload some. Looked back at the SXSW plan. Realized that even if I was at SXSW, it would be impossible to keep track of what was going on out there. I have to choose what I want to follow and learn and I have to find ways to do that – just like I would have chosen talks and panels to attend at SXSW. If I was there. Sure, I’d feel terrible I missed some things, but that is life. So I made a plan, chose some events that I would like to follow and made a deal with myself that I would not fret about what I missed.
3. Find alternative streams of information
Slideshare has numerous powerpoints. Various folk are blogging about SXSW. Find them. Read them. Go on technorati, you will find plenty of the most recent blog posts for SXSW09.
4. Focus on what matters most
If I was at SXSW, I’d focus on the people I admire the most. If I can meet them and learn from the, that would be the best. But then, we have to remember that everyone has his/her own agenda. If your learning fits in their agenda, then good. If not, just proceed to learn from interesting people – and you might end up admiring them.
So I used a combination on focussing on people I know and like that are at SXSW and random interesting tweets that helped me find some fun people as well.
5. Leverage existing tools
People kept in touch using Brightkite. Plenty of other tools were used. I grouped a bunch of people talking SXSW on my tweetdeck and just followed them.
6. Table things for later
I figured I will get a lot to read once people start heading back. A lot of learning can be done after an event.
7. Get creative. Build the tools.
I thought about some small tools - a website to register and propagate # tags before an event. Especially HUGE events like #sxsw. Perhaps have an official twitter team that will propagate relevant hashes. I am sure people will come up with plenty of ideas and build tools for just about anything.
So there – when things do not go the way you would have liked, find ways to still get the best you can. Don’t complain and argue unless you provide some suggestions along with it. The best people don’t complain, they find solutions. Experiment, play and enhance. You will miss some and you will catch some of the action. But isn’t that ALWAYS the case? Try to first be present wherever you ARE.
You can complain and move on or you can make it better and move on. You choose. If you ask people what they think of twitter you will hear anything from “utter chaos” to “it is okay” to “utterly useful”. My take is that people will continue to say pretty much the same for at least a couple of years to come ….
I might be asking for trouble here, but I would liken this twitter overload to just any other scaling phenomenon or overload in life. But let me tell you why THIS system (twitter) will not just DIE – today or tomorrow … Every single system “breaks” over a certain load – but twitter will grow and will be enhanced for very two simple reasons:
1. Twitter is a platform- and a powerful one at that.
People build tools for twitter. By not having a feature that people want in twitter, the people at Twitter are making people build tools FOR them. They are getting people like you and me invested in it. Twitter is a lab – an experimental lab, a playground. And much of its value comes from being a playground (read : lack of features).
2. Everyone is trying to be a REAL person on twitter.
Twitter is a place full of real people and connections. They will not just go away one fine morning.
When you put the two together, you can see that twitter has the support of a gazzilion tools built over it, the resilience of real human beings and the creativity of the masses. Nothing you ever do on twitter can be “WRONG” or “BAD” as long as it is working for you.
At best, twitter is an amazing platform. In the worst case, twitter is just a learning/connecting tool. In both cases, twitter is built on a bunch of real realtionships formed from real learning and sharing. Take the tool away and you still have the phenomenon that will last a long long while to come. No death in sight anytime soon now!
