The Director Sector

I love Twitter.  There, I said it.  I won’t bring up my love for this amazing service again.  But I do want to clear up some misconceptions about Twitter and tell you why it’s useful and why it’s not useful.

The other night I was discussing to a friend about theatre-related topics, specifically his callbacks in St. Louis and how I’ve been able to network in Chicago via Twitter and the blogosphere.

My friend is an actor.  A damned good one, at that.  But he’s hit some financial woes that have forced him to move back home near his parents, so they can help him out.  He wants to pursue acting as a career, but he’s having a hard time even getting his foot in the door with auditions in St. Louis.  Why?  Because he doesn’t know anyone.

I started telling him how I met most of the Chicago theatre people that I know: my blog.  I started blogging a year and a half ago (has it been that long already?) and through building up a presence here (one that has been sorely lacking of late) and reading and commenting on other blogs, I’ve made a series of connections that allowed me to get involved with a few theatres here and meet many many more people.

Blogging is fine and dandy, but not every thought or question or what-have-you is blog-worthy.  That’s when Twitter comes in.

The common misconception about Twitter is that it’s just “a series of blurbs like Facebook statuses about what people ate for breakfast.”  That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Okay, sometimes, I’ve been known to describe what I ate for breakfast.

But that’s not why I use Twitter, and it’s certainly not why Twitter is such an amazing service.

Twitter is best at networking, announcing, jump-starting discussions, spreading information, and crowd-sourcing.  What is crowd-sourcing?  It’s getting a whole bunch of people from a variety of places and disciplines to come together to solve a problem or answer a question.

Case in point, @feliciaday (whom I follow on Twitter) is in Austin, TX for the SXSW conference.  When she arrived, she tweeted something along the lines of “Hey Twitterverse, where’s a good place to eat in Austin?”  Fifteen minutes later, she tweeted “Thanks, guys!”.  The next day, @travisbedard (who lives in Austin) tweeted “I swear I just saw Felicia Day at Magnolia’s.”

See what I did there?  Felicia asked her followers (of which she has thousands) a question.  Within minutes, she’d had enough responses to solve her dilemma.  She found a good place to eat.  Cool, huh?

Here are some more examples of using Twitter to accomplish various goals:

@nickkeenan often buys and sells and acquires theatre items, props, sound equipment — you name it! — by asking for it on Twitter.  How many followers does Nick have?  184 as of right now (wow, I’m slacking..).

@dangranata re-tweeted a message from @aboutfacechi (About Face Theatre).  It read:  “Help me help @aboutfacechi - the first 5 people who reply or DM me after having made a $10 contribution will be profiled in a blog post.”  Dan will write a blog post profiling the donors to About Face Theatre on his blog.

@wilw (Wil Wheaton, of Star Trek Wesley Crusher fame) writes books.  He had a “Crazy Idea” and Tweeted “Hey Twitterverse, would you be interested in a PDF version of my latest book for $5?”  Within 15 minutes he had his answer.  An hour later, he says “Get my book in PDF format for $5 here” and shared the link via a TinyURL service.  The next day, Wheaton announced that he had sold more PDF copies of his book in the previous 12 hours than he had sold hard-copies in the previous three months.  Amazing, huh? (BTW, if you want the book, you can get it here)

Finally, @rebeccacoleman in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada tweeted a few weeks ago about “World Theatre Day” celebrations in Vancouver.  The Theatre Twitterverse’s ears’ collectively perked up.  “What’s this?” asked some Chicago Tweeps.  So fascinated by the idea, @newleaftheatre approached the League in Chicago and asked if they would like to do something.  Just a few weeks later, Mayor Daley pronounces March 27th to be World Theatre Day in Chicago.  You can check out the WTD09 blog here.  This went from a simple Tweet from Vancouver, to a full fledged celebration in Chicago in a matter of weeks.  Without Twitter, we might never have heard of it.
As you can see (if you’re still with me), Twitter is above and beyond just another “status” update site or service.  It’s a mechanism for getting things done, for solving problems, for sharing information, and for networking.

So give it a shot.  Add me (@directorsector) and a few of the others mentioned and start tweeting.  You’ll find that it’s a lot more interesting than you thought.  My friend has rethought his approach to Twitter.  Maybe you will, too.