Eight Years Ago, The Iowa Caucus Convinced Me Of The Power Of Twitter... Today? Not So Much

from the things-change dept

I first signed up for Twitter in March of 2007, but I'll admit that I barely used it for about nine months. There were two events in early 2008, however, that convinced me of Twitter's power. The first was that I logged in and saw someone who I only knew online, but not in person, mention a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in NY that I really liked, and because of that, we actually arranged to meet up there for lunch a few weeks later when I was in NY. That ability to connect people was really powerful. The second, though, was much bigger, and it was the Iowa caucus in 2008. It was in January in 2008, but I'm thinking about it today, obviously because (in case you haven't heard), today is this year's Iowa caucus that officially kicks off the Presidential silly season, known as the Presidential nominating process.

As the caucuses ramped up in that evening in 2008, something kind of fascinating happened. I saw someone (again, someone I knew via Twitter, but not in real life), retweet an account that someone had set up solely to retweet in person tweets from within the various caucuses. I quickly followed that account (which I long ago unfollowed, so I don't even remember the account name or even if it still exists). And it kept popping up first person real life reports of what was happening with the various caucus gatherings. And then I started following some of the mainstream news coverage of the caucus as well. To be honest, I didn't really care that much about what happened in Iowa, but the tweets from inside caucus gatherings seemed... unique. It made it more real and more personal.

And here was the real kicker: almost every retweet showed Barack Obama beating Hillary Clinton and John Edwards (the two other "leading" candidates) sometimes by a large margin. And yet every single mainstream news report claimed that based on their "exit polls" or whatever the hell they were doing, all three candidates were stuck in a statistical dead heat 33/33/33. But as the evening wore on, and more and more of the Twitter reports showed Obama winning caucus gather after caucus gathering, the mainstream media reports finally started showing some separating between the candidates, with Obama finally winning with over 37% of the vote (Clinton and Edwards each had about 29+).


Of course, in the eight years since, Twitter has grown and changed and struggled. And I doubt I'll have the same experience tonight. Already (unlike eight years ago), the press is pushing out lists of people to follow on Twitter to "get the full story" on the Iowa caucuses, and the list is mainly made up of professional journalists. And, at the same time, the company continues to try to reinvent itself to make itself more acceptable to Wall Street investors. The company stupidly shunned the developers and contributors who made the service so powerful in the early years, meaning that it's getting increasingly frustrating to actually use Twitter. It's been adding in "features" that the company thinks will benefit advertisers, but seem to negatively impact its best users. And there are all sorts of questions about how Twitter will survive (though it has a ton of cash on hand).

For a long time I've argued that Twitter made a big mistake in focusing on being a platform instead of a protocol, and the struggles it's facing today are just some evidence supporting that concern. As a "platform" they're so focused on building the business, rather than being useful. And in scaring off or simply blocking or killing their developer community, the fact that the service has gotten more annoying than useful lately, is a real loss. If there were a thriving developer community there would be ample opportunities for those innovations to make the service better. But instead, it's been left to Twitter alone, and the company is failing (badly) in that role.

Eight years ago I saw the power of Twitter. And today, I'm really missing that unique power. I hope it can return soon.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: elections, going direct, iowa caucus, social media, sources
Companies: twitter


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • icon
    Whatever (profile), 1 Feb 2016 @ 4:17pm

    What you say 8 years ago was Twitter before everyone had figured out how to manipulate the black box to get the desired results. It was before the bots, before the spam, and before the commercialism settled in.

    We all know how twitter works now. So do the spammers, jammers, scammers, and general idiots that clutter the online world with spam and such. Twitter long since fell into that pile, and it's unlikely to ever make it back.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Richard (profile), 2 Feb 2016 @ 2:08am

      Re:

      We all know how twitter works now. So do the spammers, jammers, scammers, and general idiots that clutter the online world with spam and such.

      Well you would know that - wouldn't you?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 2 Feb 2016 @ 4:31am

      Re:

      I don't know about you, but I was well aware of spam, bots, and commercialism eight years ago and more.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Ninja (profile), 2 Feb 2016 @ 5:06am

      Re:

      No, it'a because copyright doesn't last to infinity! These poor artists, how can they protect their tweets?!?!?!?

      /incoherentrant

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Wendy Cockcroft, 3 Feb 2016 @ 2:39am

      Re:

      That can be said of any online platform. Hell, we even get "the spammers, jammers, scammers, and general idiots that clutter the online world with spam and such" right here on Techdirt. It's not Twitter thing, it's an internet thing.

      Twitter needs to let the developers back in if it wants to stay relevant, says Mike, and I think he's right. If it's not the most useful sharing platform on the internet, we'll vote with our feet and Twitter will go the way of MySpace.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Feb 2016 @ 5:48pm

    Twitter search sux

    I am a complete novice at Twitter, but I must say it is nearly impossible to find local tweets. They bought and killed of Tweetdeck which made that easy.

    On top of that, the majority of trending tweets are frickin celebrity gossip and teens/tweens asking bebop bands to follow them.

    I am sure there is good stuff there, but it is not really worth looking for.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    TKnarr (profile), 1 Feb 2016 @ 6:20pm

    Twitter underneath the interface can't be that complex. The two hard parts would seem to be the search function (given keywords, find relevant tweets or accounts to follow) and filtering out the spambots (I'd love to have a big enough unfiltered dataset to see how Bayesian filtering would work on it, and I wonder if just a delay between sign-up and activation (ie. you sign up today, your account will be approved and activated tomorrow) would be enough to discourage them).

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Feb 2016 @ 7:19pm

    Hopefully that ship will turn with #helloworld 2016.
    Maybe they will open it up to some new insights. Getting rid of most of the exec staff should create at least some change.

    https://blog.twitter.com/2016/announcing-our-2016-helloworld-developer-tour

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 2 Feb 2016 @ 1:34am

      Re:

      All the change lately has been negative. They are going censorship happy, and the internet is starting to route around them.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 Feb 2016 @ 5:10am

    This is when some of the old developers build something fresh and new ,it'll happen some young kid will create something new and less corporate.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 Feb 2016 @ 9:51am

    This year the Iowa caucus convinced me:

    That the DNC is willing to burn its house to the ground in order to put HRC in office.

    6 coin flips, ALL went to HRC? Really? How many people are never going to EVER give money to the DNC again because of the blatant corruption it has demonstrated so far this year?

    My guess is 2020 is going to be good for the greens and the tea party.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 2 Feb 2016 @ 11:45am

    The national mint has approved a new quarter featuring the state of Iowa.

    It has Hillary on both sides.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Come ON, 2 Feb 2016 @ 12:17pm

    NitTwits

    tHEY have already elected the next president of their new world chaos.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.