The Wandering CIO

I work for a large financial services company.  We take our responsibilities for protecting and enhancing our client’s wealth exceedingly seriously.  We are also one of the most highly regulated Industries – and of course we all expect that to become even truer in the aftermath of the recent recession.

When faced with new technology we always have to look at both how it can be used positively and also assess the risks it poses.  Social networking technology is one of those types of technologies that seem to have what I call a “bar bell” shaped profile: It has some incredibly strong benefits, and at the other end of the spectrum, some very big risks.  Technologies with these profiles are among the most difficult to manage because people really want to use them and the risks are very difficult to mitigate.

Since our industry is very risk adverse we always seem to focus on the risks first – so let’s look at the basic risks:  (continue reading…)

Kanye West is his recent online rant has perfectly and brilliantly put into words my feelings about Twitter in one sentence.   “Everything that Twitter Offers I Need Less of.” 

His main rant is about the fact that there are Kanye imposters out there that the service will not remove.  But along the way he hits a home run about the actual usefulness of the service. 

As a CIO I need to understand new technology and how to put it to commercial use.  It’s mandatory as part of my job that I understand new “cool new services” like Twitter.  So first I decided to see what my peers were doing.[1] They were Tweeting about conferences, new product announcements and new ideas.  While this was good information to share it was not as easy to find and not as comprehensive as what was on their blogs. 

For months I’ve scratched my head about Twitter.  I’m supposed to be the guy who understands and evangelizes new technology.  If I don’t “get” Twitter what’s wrong with me?  I personally found Twitter inferior to just about every alternative information delivery vehicle I compared it to and I gradually formed the admittedly self-serving view that something is wrong not wrong with me but with Twitter instead.  I think this video called the “Twouble with Twitters” clarifies it even better:

So I decided that I was going to write a really controversial post to the effect of “Twitter is just a fad – get over it”, or maybe even “Twitter: Pointless!” to goad you exploring this with me except almost all data points in the opposite direction.   Then Kanye’s post hit me like a lightning bolt. 

Here are my thoughts in a nutshell:

• Signal to noise ratio is way too low. The analogy that makes the most sense to me is overhearing people’s cell phone conversations -- Most the information is irrelevant to me, not really that interesting, and is delivered to me against my will. OK that last part is incorrect because you have to choose to follow someone on Twitter so it’s more like choosing to listen to other people’s cell phone conversations.
• People Tweet in real time and occasionally report “major” news way ahead of traditional news channels. This was the case with the recent terrorist attack in Mumbai. So what? I could Tweet right now that a major earthquake struck California and I’m buried in rubble. How do you know if it’s true or not?[2] (The signal to noise issue again…) I guess I could follow CNN on Twitter but it just seems a bit too similar to those people who like to sit home and listen to their Police scanners.
• Time is my most precious commodity. I actually believe it’s everyone’s most precious commodity -- we all get a finite amount of it and no deal with your divine entity of choice will buy you more. So why would I take time tweeting and following your tweets? The last thing I need on earth is another “inbox” to check or website to monitor.
• I don’t have anything interesting to Tweet. My thoughts generally range beyond 140 characters and most of the time they are directed at specific people where phone, email or IM are orders of magnitude more efficient. If I have a general thought worthy of sharing with the world I have a “real blog” for that. Actually it’s almost worse. Do people realize nothing posted to the Internet ever goes away? Those tweets that frat boys at UCLA are posting at this very moment will still be on the Internet when they graduate and look for a job and still there when they run for office. Personally I am very careful what I post online based on that knowledge.
• Twitter’s popularity is surging in part because of all the news stories about Twitter’s surging popularity. The real question to ask is how sustainable is Twitter? Fortunately people out there study this very topic. A report from Nielsen Online suggests that most users are tempted by Twitter’s novelty and then lose interest. Aha! For most of the last year, Twitter’s audience retention rate -- users who return the next month -- was below 30 percent. Put another way: greater than 70% don’t return. At similar levels of Internet reach, both Facebook and MySpace had retention rates of more than 60 percent.[3]

So what do I think about Twitter?  I actually think it will evolve into something useful.  I’m just not sure when or how.  “Following” someone on Twitter is like subscribing to a RSS feed of their blog, only less useful because the posts are limited in size and contain almost no useful information.  However the process is very easy to do, unlike actually using a RSS reader, signing up for an RSS feed, etc.  So if Twitter actually expanded the post size and the quality of the content improves (rather than “Just had pizza at Ray’s.  Mmmmm”) it could become something great.  In the mean time I’m down with Kanye.