Twitter Zeitgeist

beyond 140 characters

All this hoopla about Twitter and its IPO has gotten me to think about this moment as a “Twitter zeitgeist.” Everyone seems to be talking about Twitter these days. Hashtags and @ symbols are de rigueur thanks to Twitter. Now that the company has gone public, people who wouldn’t know an “@” from a “#” want a piece of the bird’s nest, so to speak.

Prior to Twitter’s IPO, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about a woman who went to the nearest branch of her brokerage firm and asked to buy shares of Twitter. The branch representative informed her that Twitter stock wouldn’t be available to the public until the next day. The woman had a thousand dollars or so to invest. To paraphrase the woman, she told the reporter: “I don’t want to miss out. I don’t even know how to use Twitter. People keep talking about it, so I want to buy its stock.”

I followed the festivities on CNBC on the day of Twitter’s IPO. All day analysts debated the valuation of the company. The news broadcast was financial schizophrenia at its finest. Back and forth analysts debated Twitter’s worth. One analyst who argued that the stock was at a good price after the stock started trading and used Twitter’s future potential to bring in revenue as his valuation measure. While another analyst argued vehemently that the post-IPO price was absolutely overvalued given the unprofitability of the company. This scenario played out during the whole day: it was the battle of the company as it is now versus the company that it could become that determined analysts’ sentiments.

Amid all this TV chatter, I couldn’t help but think about that woman who wanted to buy Twitter stock because she didn’t want to miss out. I thought about how emblematic she was of this Twitter zeitgeist. Of course she wasn’t alone, as I’m sure the coverage building up to Twitter’s IPO had an impact on many people who wanted to be part of the Twitter moment. I admit, I almost placed a limit order the night before, but I decided against it. Even though I was a beta-tester of Twitter and have used the platform on and off for the last six years (more so today than years prior), I felt strangely connected to that woman who knew nothing about Twitter.

I didn’t hit the “place a trade” button the night before Twitter’s IPO. Instead I thought about Twitter and other social media platforms that I use. I drew a blank when I thought about Twitter and its “future potential.” In all honesty, I couldn’t figure out what that potential would be. Twitter’s business model wasn’t clear to me. I wondered whether Twitter had the legs that could take it beyond the here and now. Even though I continue to use Twitter, I can’t say for sure if I truly understand it, even after six years of using it.

During the day of its IPO, CNBC brought a man on who was giddy with excitement about his Twitter investment. The host asked him at what price he bought the stock, and the man replied that it didn’t matter—”somewhere in the mid-$40s,” he said. He said that he was banking on Twitter to pay for his child’s college education. The enthusiasm in his voice stirred anxiety in me. Here, I thought, is a guy capturing the essence of this Twitter zeitgeist—the blind optimism that he had for the company’s future potential was palpable. Zeitgeists are about defining qualities or feelings of particular moments in time. Zeitgeists are, aptly enough, about sociality—what binds us together as social beings. “Wow,” I thought, “how many other people are banking on Twitter?”

If this moment is defined by Twitter and our embrace of its intelligibility and some yet-to-be-determined future promises,I wonder if we all need to take a collective moment to do some due diligence.

I wanted to tweet the above sentence that I wrote, but it’s 59 characters over. The 140 character limit of a tweet may be a telling metaphor for the lifespan of this Twitter zeitgeist: #FrustratinglyShort.