These Days, We’re All Twits
Sunday, April 5, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
Once up a time (ten years ago, say) if you wanted to publish an article or column or amusing anecdote you needed…a publisher. Someone who would read your article/column/anecdote and shout, “Out of the tens of thousands of unsolicited submissions I’ve received this month, THIS will be the one to see the light of day!”
Of course the scenario described above is a joke–publishers NEVER printed unsolicited manuscripts! They only took pieces submitted by an agent, so before you could get something published you needed to get an agent first. And how does one get an agent? By being a successful, published author. You see the Catch-22, yes? You see that getting your brilliant prose in front of the masses was a rather daunting task?
But those days are long gone, thanks to the internet. These days you don’t need to find a publisher because with a few keystrokes you can become a publisher yourself. Anyone can start a blog, and from things I’ve read (online, of course) it seems that just about everyone HAS started a blog. There are approximately eleventy jillion blogs out there (statistics may be fabricated) and while 99.9997% are either pure spam or are never updated or are strangely concerned with the coming hegemony of the Mole Men, there are still millions of blogs out there chock-full of interesting and lively writing, about just about every subject under the sun. Even poker (pointing to myself and coughing quietly). Indeed, both Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth prominently feature their blogs on their recently-relaunched websites.
If you’re a poker fan you’ve no doubt read scores of blogs, especially when a big tournament is running and you’re trying to keep up with the action. Go to any major event and you’ll find dozens of writers posting hand histories and writing up interviews and uploading photos of the action. And of course many of the players themselves post to their own blogs. This all gives the poker fan an incredibly rich and diverse media smorgasbord to pick and choose from.
But this is the internet, where changes in the status quo occur every fifteen minutes. Blogs aren’t going away, heaven forbid, but they’re now jostling with different social media platforms for a share of our limited attention span. I’m sure you’re heard of Facebook, I’m sure you’re on Facebook, I’m sure you’ve been friended by former high-school classmates who wouldn’t even look at you back in the day. Facebook is an enjoyable time-sink that no doubt has contributed to the global economic meltdown, what with everyone taking quizzes about “Which Sex in the City Star Are You??” instead of doing their goddam jobs.
But while my rampant paranoia leads me to blame Facebook for crippling my 401(k), I fear that the advent of Twitter may signal the end of Western Civilization. In case you’ve been lucky enough to be living in a cave the last year or so, Twitter is an application that lets you broadcast messages that are up to 140 characters long. They say that brevity is the soul of wit, and it is possible to be witty in just 140 characters. But being an old fuddy-duddy (and a blogger) I hope that people don’t drift away from reading stuff like, y’know, sentences. And paragraphs. I like me a nice juicy paragraph.
On Twitter you read other folks’ messages by “following” them, and they can read your message by following you. It’s kinda like sending text messages, except that instead of having to pick and choose who to send it to it’s broadcast to all of your followers. And you can embed links in your tweets, post photos, etc.
Twitter is diabolically addictive. And EVERYBODY is doing it. Shaquille O’Neal has built up a massive following, going so far as to tweet his location so fans could meet up with him at a Phoenix diner. Demi Moore found herself in a difficult situation when one of her followers threatened suicide. Milwaukee Bucks forward Charlie Villaneuva got in trouble for posting updates at halftime. Perhaps the most famous use of Twitter came when Flight 1549 landed in the Hudson River, as a ferry passenger twitted “There’s a plane in the Hudson” and posted a picture of passengers evacuating the plane.
So what does all this have to do with poker? Well, poker players have embraced Twitter just like everyone else. Maybe even moreseo–go to a poker tournament and you constantly see players stepping away from the table to text and check email. Now these players will also be sending tweets out to their legions of followers. And as poker journalist Jay Newnum recently wrote, this is going to change how poker is covered, and followed. You won’t have to wait for an update to learn Phil Hellmuth is doing in the Main Event–he’ll be tweeting about his big hands and chip counts and bad beat stories.
Because Phil Hellmuth is on Twitter (of course), and so is Annie Duke and Tiffany Michelle and Liv Boeree and Adam “Roothlus” Levy and, gosh, just about everyone. In fact there’s a blog that continually updates its list of poker pros on Twitter. As the World Series of Poker draws closer I think that list is going to dramatically increase, as players realize there’s a massive audience out there anxious to hear from them directly. And players who aren’t famous can let the folks back home know how they’re doing, since they tend to fly under the poker media radar (especially early on).
I agree with Newnum that Twitter won’t replace tournament reporting, nor will Twitter do away with longer-form writing. It’s a communication tool, a unique and very valuable tool, and I’m very curious to see how Twitter changes the way people follow the 2009 WSOP. And I’ll be there, in the middle of it all, posting here on the UB blog and, I’m sure, on Twitter as well. Follow me, and we’ll see where Twitter takes us.
Related posts:
- Final Table Updates A quick note–the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event is moving to...
- P0ker J0 Update Hello UBers! Well I just have to bring myself to...
- Don’t Know What You’re Missing I did something today I’ve never done before. I showed...
- One Way to Draw a Crowd Every day at 2:20 pm World Series of Poker Commissioner...
- The Marathon, the Sprint For many poker players sitting down in a WSOP event...
Tags: Annie Duke, annie duke twitter, Phil Hellmuth, phil hellmuth twitter, poker players on twitter, poker twitter, Twitter, twitter 2009 wsop, twitter poker tournaments, twitter wsop, ultimatebet, world series of poker, WSOP
April 5th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Something tells me that it will go the opposite direction. Who wants to subscribe to every pro and get their 140 character take on things when a tournament reporter can sum up everything on a blog and twitter links to the updates.
April 6th, 2009 at 11:26 am
LOL WAT A LOAD OF CODSWALLOP! I THINK THE WORD URE REFERRING TO IS ” TWATS” AND NOT TWITS….
HOWEVER A LITTLE TWITTER TWATTER GOES FAR!….
DO TOOLS LIKE FACEBOOK AND MSN HELP TO EXPLOIT POKER CHEATING?? MUCH EASIER WAY TO TELL OTHER PEOPLE WHAT HAND THEY HOLDING RATHER THAN TYPE IT IN THE CHAT BOX…..
May 16th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
[...] emerge from the cave and get with the times! Twitter has been the big thing in social media for the last month or so and last night was the first freeroll tournament for the folks following UltimateBet on Twitter. [...]