When the Twit hits the fan, it’s time to leave

Welcome to Alex’s Agenda, the new weekly column from the front-lines of the future by The Memo’s Editor in Chief, Alex Wood.

As City AM so brilliantly put it today, the Twit’s hit the fan. Another outage that sent both the media and Twitter’s share price into freefall.

It’s not the first time the service has gone down, but just like every time before it, it’s left most users wondering why they even bothered. Privately, I’ve made no secret of my feelings towards Twitter. It’s overhyped, a drain on my time and rarely makes me happy.

Wednesday's @CityAM front page: THE TWIT'S HIT THE FAN pic.twitter.com/jTFO7lK5pw

— Christian May (@ChristianJMay) January 19, 2016

Did you miss Twitter yesterday? I know I’m not the only one that didn’t. The tide has turned and we’re all asking if it is finally time to leave.

Shouting into an empty room

Twitter spreads anxiety everywhere it touches. Demands your attention but so rarely gives back. I’m not even going to touch on the network’s biggest problem – for many, it truly is a hateful space where people carelessly throw abuse at each other with little regard for feelings, let alone their professional image.

Outside of my time at The Memo I teach young broadcast journalists the good, the bad and the ugly of the web at City University. I will never forget the time when one guest speaker announced to my students that “the CV is dead… Twitter is the new CV and if you’re not on it, you won’t be getting a job”. It sent them into a blind panic, wrongly thinking that a stream of meaningless 140 character drivel would land them the dream job at the BBC.

Would we say the same of any other social network? Surely, when it comes to getting a job, the only network worth investing in is LinkedIn? Failing that, when it comes to working in the media, you are only as good as your published work. It’s bylines that count, not tweets.

It’s the same with TV news. When I worked as a producer I remember constantly having to prompt reluctant anchors to beg viewers to follow them on Twitter. It never added up, millions of viewers rarely translated into more than a meagre thousand followers, who only shared sexist remarks and abuse.

Build things that matter

Take a good look at your Twitter followers. I bet the smartest people you know are not the ones chained to their timelines. They’re out there, building things that matter, things that can change the world for the better.

I had the honour of judging the first Forbes 30 Under 30 in Europe list which was celebrated this week at glitzy launch at Shoreditch House in London. The list assembled the next generation of European leaders who will shape the future of our media, tech, culture and business.

I was struck by the brilliance of the winners. Take Jamal Edwards MBE, founder of SBTV, one of Youtube’s most successful channels for undiscovered musicians. I shared a Sky News green room with him during the election and watched him work his magic. Social media is a critical part of everything he does, he hardly put down his iPhone, constantly connecting with his fans on Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram. But he’s judged by the quality of what he does, discovering the artists of the future like Ed Sheeran, a year before he hit the big time.

Tweeting too hard

Each and every one of the media category winners that I judged use Twitter, but a quick scan of their timeline confirms the trend, they’re making the most of the precious time they have and tweeting less. If you want to find people who are really winning at Twitter, don’t look at their followers, look at how many tweets they send versus their follower count. In the free for all game world of Twitter, it’s quality, not quantity that matters.

Is this column my way of announcing me leaving Twitter? Sadly not. This isn’t some cry for help to get people to beg me to stay. I recognise the network is for now at least a quick and easy way to connect with people across the world. But I’m going to follow what the smart people do and make sure every moment counts.