Why the democracy of Twitter means media must check their egos at the door

I have just read a very interesting post from Jon Bernstein outlining his lessons learned from running the Twitter stream of Channel 4 News over the past year or so.

It’s a great read and an excellent example of the ways in which the media can really get this right. Check it out for yourself because it also points to how the media can get this so wrong.

In a word: Listen.

Ask questions, solicit response. Call it ‘crowdsourcing’ if you must but understand that this is a conversation, not a lecture.

I’ve stopped following a great many media outlets because they simply don’t understand this. Too many do nothing more than spam out links to their content, often in chunks of five, six or seven rapid tweets.

It shows a fundamental failure to understand the value of social media, driven no doubt by a degree of ego, or a sense of self-importance and inequality that is out of kilter with the democracy of Twitter.

If you break down the five points Jon makes, three are about listening, two are about talking.