Brevity is the Key (aka Why Twitter Works)

If you've been following the explosive growth of Twitter, you may wonder why it's grown so fast and become so popular. Well, let me add my opinion to the heap 'o opinions on Twitter.

First off, for those who claim it's a fad--don't believe 'em. Twitter is here to stay.

Many years ago, when I was a DJ at WQUE-FM in New Orleans (aka 'Q93'), our Program Director, Jay Stevens, used to review airchecks of the entire airstaff on a weekly basis. His favorite expression was, "Remember, brevity is the key." He constantly emphasized that he wanted all of his DJs to get their point across in as short amount of time/fewest words as possible. Ideally, he didn't want his DJs to speak for longer than 7 seconds (!) at a time, as he wanted us to get our listeners 'back to the music' as quickly as possible. While many of us at the time thought his philosophy was a bit extreme (not to mention the bruising of our egos), the growing popularity of Twitter has reminded me of him and that time early on in my broadcasting career.

The beauty of Twitter is that everyone has to get to their point quickly, i.e., cut to the chase. If you want to elaborate further and/or disseminate additional information, you can easily do so by directing folks to your blog, or a published article (be it your own or someone else's), video, audio, etc.

Simply put, it works. Twitter really has nothing to do with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). It has everything to do with how much information and media we all are now constantly bombarded with these days, especially since the expansion of satellite media services (DirecTV, Sirius radio), cable TV networks, and the Internet/World Wide Web, which includes e-mail, social media, text messaging and more, of course. Add the instant availability of all of this information via mobile devices such as the iPhone, BlackBerry, and it's a challenge for anyone to digest and sort through the constant stream of information and entertainment options.

Twitter condenses virtually all of that into short, 140 character maximum bursts, making it a 'quick read' to get up to speed on most things of interest to you, and then you can decide what you want to 'deep dive' into and explore further. Think of it as a new 'My Yahoo' home page.

The days of a single daily newspaper and 3 TV networks have long since fallen by the wayside, of course, and the emergence and current reality of information overload has challenged all of us.

Enter Twitter. It simply came along at the right time and place. Note I don't have any kind of equity stake in Twitter (although I wish I did!), or personally know Evan Williams or Biz Stone, the founders of Twitter.

In today's world, we all need to get our point(s) across as quickly as possible, because all of us have too many other data streams/information to get to and digest in our busy lives, and human beings still need to sleep, and do various other things with their lives in between that.

Thus, my old Program Director, Jay Stevens, was right, and, actually, way ahead of his time. Twitter is the brevity key we've been looking for the last few years.

That's Mark's Mark for today. Have a great week.