What can’t Twitter do? (October 2009 edition)

Russell Smith penned a column last week in The Globe and Mail titled “The trouble with Twitter” — alternatively, the less SEO-friendly print edition headline, “Twit plus tweet spells trouble” — focusing on the platform’s role as an outlet for celebrity news, under the impression that tweets never impacted journalism until a British columnist questioned circumstances surrounding the death of gay singer Stephen Gatley of Boyzone: “What will elections be like when Twitter campaigns run voting patterns?” But eight months into Twitter qualifying as print media column fodder, users can barely be bothered to groan — even the Globe’s ever-vigilant communities editor Matthew Ingram failed to call out Smith for not knowing what he was talking about. Could this be the end of the professional cynic wielding 750 words of arrogance over 140 characters? More likely in the future, then, are reports about Twitter-powered startups: Assetize earned a Globe small business section profile after their attempt to be an auction house for user-name resellers was shut down. For their newest scheme, plugging dime-per-click messages into personal streams, “The fact that Twitter hasn’t opposed it is a great sign.” At the Toronto Star, stories about Twitter are mercifully getting more micro: Paul F. Tompkins, a hitherto obscure Los Angeles comedian, earned some ink for his ability to book two shows at the Rivoli after 300 of his 28,000 followers promised to attend. But the entirely made-up news that Mike Myers and Cameron Diaz were contractually forbidden by DreamWorks from tweeting details about Shrek 4 was reported as fact all over the place — then, once revealed as apocryphal, didn’t seem to merit real corrections. Why let the truth get in the way of a talking point? Kevin Smith, reached to discuss the matter on CBC Radio One’s Q, pointed to his own 14-year track record of expressing online bona fides. “People sometimes say to me, ‘Is that really you twittering” commiserated celeb interviewer Jian Ghomeshi, “as if I’ve hired somebody to do this.”