Twits Tampa Tweets

So-so social media have a formal and expanded place at the RNC do in Tampa. A fine piece in the Tampa Bay Times details accommodations and projects impacts.

Big talking heads like Wolf Blitzer speak of how tweets have already changed his operations. The convention will have roving FB and other media types posting text and video. There are green rooms for candidates and others to do interviews, Skyke meetings, and social media posts.

As a regular, relentless and maybe now passé blogger, I'm mixed on it all. I too swirl in the vortex including Twitter, G+, FB and more. There are plenty of blogs, which have progressed far from the days of ain't-my-kittens/kids/lover-cute days. Yet, undeniably local blogs, particularly political ones, are rarer and have less clout (not Klout).

It was six years ago, here in MA, that gubernatorial candidate Deval Patrick showed net savvy, something his friend Barack Obama picked up and ran with two years after that. They treated bloggers like reporters, used campaign-related websites brilliantly, and along the way, got love, loyalty and votes from millions of first-time and other young voters.

That was particularly significant in that before those elections the GOP had been much more tech and net savvy. Fortunately for the Dems, those previous web uses were not grassroots organizing, rather the chants and drumbeats of heavy-handed and nasty messages. Patrick and Obama showed how to get voters not haters.

Now it's the huge, largely national blogs that have presence, and the spontaneity and diverse insight have nearly disappeared in the arrogance and puffery. Young voters are not nearly as engaged and candidates don't seem to be making any effort to duplicate the successes of 2006 and 2008.

Frankly even though I am on Twitter (@whirred), I acknowledge that insight and analysis aren't likely in 140 characters. You can point to larger posts, your own or others, but most tweet eaters aren't much for clicking away from their feeds.

It is funny to see such oldsters as Blitzer learning to use their thumbs and feigning social-media love and savvy. Of course, they had to do so. Yet their abbreviated and oversimplified and follow-the-scooper oral coverage was LITE enough already. Slashing content further for FB and Tweeter makes that even more trivial.

Social media will be very common at the RCN and almost certainly the DNC shows. Alas, they'll fall in the balloon and funny hat class — colorful, expected and inconsequential.