Twitterviews - Online Interviews in 140 Characters
Yesterday morning, the man who just last year said, "I am learning to get online myself," participated in an online interview via Twitter, being coined as a "Twitterview" by the news media. John McCain responded to 10 questions asked by ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, all of which were posted on Twitter through "@replies". Because of the interviewee's popularity, and the term "Twitterview" being acknowledged through the media, there has been a good amount of hype surrounding the event. My question is, will the term "Twitterview" stick around? And will people start to schedule more of these Twitter-based interviews?
It turns out the term "Twitterview" has been around since last year, at least, with some past instances of the term stated here, here, and here, for example. In fact, there is an entire site dedicated to Twitterviews, with Twitterview #1 posted on October 30th, 2008.
So will the term and/or concept flourish? It's hard to tell, considering the negative reviews of the McCain Twitterview:
NBC:
"New levels of inanity reached in most useless interview of all time"
Huffington Post:
"...grown men answering each others' trivial questions in pidgin English, with time lags, miscommunications..."
For the sake of explaining why it got negative reviews, I think the article on TG Daily sums it up nicely:
"...attempting to conduct an interview with any level of seriousness utilizing 140 characters is nearly impossible. You can't get good responses, and it's impossible to discuss serious issues -- even though they clearly attempted."
So it seems serious topics in Twitterviews leave much to be desired, though I doubt we have seen the end of the term or concept. Limiting answers to 140 characters may prove interesting when the subject matter is less sensitive.