Calgary Herald Digital - Calgary Herald - 29 Mar 2009 - Calgary poised for Twitter boom Page 1 of 3

Article rank 29 Mar 2009 Calgary Herald NICK LEWIS CALGARY HERALD
NLEWIS@THEHERALD.CANWEST.COM

Calgary poised for Twitter boom

Online social site catches on in business community
If, as Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan once enthused, the medium is the message, then the
message of the growing “twittering” phenomenon may be we don’t have much to say to one another, but
would like to say it often.

Ted Rhodes, Calgary Herald

Roger Kondrat, one of the legion of users of the new online social craze Twitter, tweets from his
Calgary home.

Twitter.com, the online social networking site that has nearly seven million people microblogging about
their lives, allows users to send each other quirky text messages, or “tweets,” under 140 characters —
about the length of a Facebook status update.
Due to this bare-bones approach to communicating, all the world’s a-twitter about this rapidly growing
online application.
“It’s the simplicity, the elegance of it,” says Steve Dotto, host of TV’s Dotto Tech and a Twitter user. “It
might be the same reason why the popularity of e-mailing is declining, but texting is increasing.”
Part of Twitters’ appeal, says Dotto, is the challenge of trying to publish such messages in tight
constraints.
“It’s a new form of writing that takes a lot of thought, because you have to boil your core message down
to its simplest form,” he says.
Spurred by the popularity of web-browsing cellphones such as the iPhone and BlackBerry, Twitter has
seen its traffic grow 900 per cent in just one year, as politicians, celebrities, athletes and even business

http://digital.calgaryherald.com/epaper/showarticle.aspx?article=b32a8e8d-7231-40ae-8f3... 3/29/2009
Calgary Herald Digital - Calgary Herald - 29 Mar 2009 - Calgary poised for Twitter boom Page 2 of 3

leaders have made headlines with their tweets.

The online social network received four million unique visitors for the month of February, up from
123,000 from the same month last year. It’s a massive jump from 14th most popular social networking site
on the Internet to No. 3, right after behemoths Facebook and MySpace.
“ Facebook is to 2007 as Twitter is to 2009,” says Roger Kondrat, co-owner of Mighty Mouth Media, a
social media consultancy.
Working out of Calgary, Kondrat specializes in helping companies use social media to connect with
customers and prospects.
Intrigued by blogs, social networks, and podcasts as marketing tools, it was only natural that Kondrat
was one of Twitter’s earliest users almost three years ago.
He has used Twitter to recruit ambassadors for companies, manage features for products through
customer feedback, and engage potential customers.
“It’s the most open communication platform out there,” says Kondrat. “In 2009, (I will not have) a
meeting where Twitter will not be brought up.”
Because of its 1 40-byte constraints, the most popular tweets tend to either be breaking news events or
clever quips about the mundane.
Some 15 minutes before t he New York Times had the story of January’s Hudson River plane crash in its
online edition, and some 15 hours before the story hit its print edition, Twitter users who witnessed the
crash live were blogging about it. The site was also the first place news broke of the Mumbai terror attacks
last November in which 173 died.
Ever since Barack Obama used the network to reach out to 237,500 young people last year, a number of
other politicians have also jumped on the bandwagon. Toronto Mayor David Miller tweets, and claims more
than 4,000 followers. So does London Mayor Boris Johnson, who texted 20,000 followers after testing an
electric car this month.
“You remember that bit in Star Wars, when they leap into hyperspace and the stars are turned into
white streaks? That’s how the Tesla was!” Johnson tweeted.
Calgary Mayor Dave Bronconnier isn’t quite at that cutting edge of technology, says his chief of staff
Marc Henry.
“Well, we’ve looked at it and we’re still looking at it,” Henry says. “The challenge is, if you get into it,
you have to get into it with both feet. It’s sort of a matter of, ‘Do you think (the mayor) can update his
Twitter?’ ”
One Calgary politician who can is Jason Kenney, Canada’s minister of citizenship, immigration and
multiculturalism.
“He signed up two weeks ago and he already has several hundred followers,” says his spokesman
Alykhan Velshi. In just that time, Velshi says, the service has already proved its worth.
“We had an experience last week where a reporter put out a story that minced the minister’s words,” he
says. “He was able to offer a rapid rebuttal response on his Twitter page.”
Celebrities such as Britney Spears, Jimmy Fallon and P. Diddy have also latched onto the service in a bid
to keep themselves brimming atop cultural consciousness.
John Cleese has written about his pet chickens, while MC Hammer has mused on the economy (“We just
fed the nation 15 [years] of evil soup. Now they’re throwing up.”)
People Magazine reported that Jennifer Aniston broke up with rocker boyfriend John Mayer because of
his obsessive twittering. Skipping publicists and gossip blogs, Mayer later wrote on his Twitter page, “this
heart didn’t come with instructions.”
The opportunity for these celebrities to circumvent the media has made it a real obsession in Hollywood,
says Dotto.
“If you want to know why the Israeli Defense Forces are using Twitter, it’s because it allows them to say
something in their words before the media gets a hold of it,” he says. “That’s why it’s become big with both
celebrities and business leaders.
“And it doesn’t matter whether i t ’s good or bad news, the fact that it comes directly from the mouths of
these people cuts them some slack. So I’m not sure people have found relevance in it yet, but everyone
sees the potential.”
Even with no money exchanging hands in these social networks, the advertising potential is immense.
Five months ago when Twitter began seeing an upswing in popularity, it turned down a $500-million U.S.
buyout from rival Facebook Inc.
Perhaps that’s because those who do tweet do it with an alarming, obsessive frequency, a signal of a
healthy future for the site.
Milwaukee Bucks forward Charlie Villanueva has been a chronic tweeter, even facing the wrath of his
coach for texting at the halftime intermission of an NBA game earlier this month.
His messages have included letting his followers know he “misses mom’s cooking” and has “love for
Shaq.” Shaquille O’Neal, the NBA player he referenced, is another obsessive tweeter who doesn’t share that
love — at halftime of a Phoenix Suns game on Monday, he wrote, “Attention all twitterers. I’ma tweet at

http://digital.calgaryherald.com/epaper/showarticle.aspx?article=b32a8e8d-7231-40ae-8f3... 3/29/2009
Calgary Herald Digital - Calgary Herald - 29 Mar 2009 - Calgary poised for Twitter boom Page 3 of 3

halftime and not get fined like vill a new wave a whteva his name is.”
But like any new cultural trend on the street, not everyone loves to hear their cellphone go tweet, tweet,
tweet.
Marco Sdao, a 33-year-old working in the video gaming industry, signed up for Twitter just last week
and says he’s already given up on it. He lets me know this, interestingly enough, via Facebook’s instant
messaging service.
“Well, I initially signed up because some of the guys here at work use it,” he writes, “but I lost interest
fast.”
Sdao says simply updating his status seemed like a pointless endeavour.
“As it is now, I don’t think Twitter will ever overtake Facebook as the social networking site of choice,”
he says.
Dotto s ays h e ex pe c t s Twitter’s stock will continue to soar, though its eventual downfall may come
about because of the capriciousness of its core audience, people who could abandon it as quickly as they
adopted it.
“The people drawn to Twitter are people on the cutting edge, the real nerds who are resentful of the fact
that the general population have found and taken over Facebook,” he says.

“Twitter is still out there, it’s still on the edge. But once the general population figures that out, those
people will quickly move on to the next thing.”
Printed and distributed by NewpaperDirect | www.newspaperdirect.com, US/Can: 1.877.980.4040, Intern: 800.6364.6364 | Copyright and protected
by applicable law.

http://digital.calgaryherald.com/epaper/showarticle.aspx?article=b32a8e8d-7231-40ae-8f3... 3/29/2009