My Twitter feed this evening is full of Twitterers poking fun at how homogeneous the RNC crowd looks on TV. I can’t help but see the irony in complaining about something like “Too many white people!” on a platform like Twitter.
The RNC crowd is definitely homogeneous looking. But Twitter is just as homogeneous and groupthinky—either that or the Twitter crowd is a self-selecting group of urban liberals who drive small cars (as this HitWise Researcher claims in a Time magazine column). And not just liberals, Obama liberals. Obama’s been all the rage on Twitter almost since its inception. Certainly, his campaign has used it brilliantly, but I suspect even if his official campaign had no Twitter presence at all, Twitterers would represent him just as well.
It’s been fun following the Twitter buzz during the high points of each campaign—the DNC, Obama’s speech, McCain’s surprise choice of Palin (lots of good one-liners on Twitter that day), and especially the speeches tonight. It’s like listening to a greek chorus give voice to young urban America in 140 characters or less.
Now, because everyone follows a different set of Twitter users, everyone’s Twitter feed will reflect different things. Or so you’d think. Go to search.twitter.com and type in “Palin” and “McCain,” and then “Obama” and “Biden.” If anything, Twitter is even more homogeneous than the RNC crowd. I bet there’s plenty of disagreement on the convention floor about Sarah Palin. There certainly isn’t on Twitter.
