Tag : connections
 
“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.” – Big Brother, 1984
“What you do, where you go, where you live, who you know…” – Ebony Bones, “We Know All About You”
– image via purplelime‘s flickr
In 2007 I created a Twitter account, played around with it for a while and then went “hm, lame”. There were only a handful of people updating and because I didn’t know them or care for their link content, the whole concept of following strangers tweets didn’t appeal to me. I forgot about it for a long time and didn’t really become active on it until late ’08.
Enter 2009.
Everyone tweets, everything, all the time. It’s insane. My friends use Twitter. My coworkers use Twitter. All of the social media experts/techelebs/early adopters and their circles of followers and the people who follow them use Twitter. More and more celebrities are on Twitter. People create fake accounts and impersonate celebrities. Is this starting to sound familiar?
Yes, Twitter is MySpace for adults who are over MySpace, with few teens (for now) chronicling their daily activities and observations. How did this happen?
Follow Me = Friend Me (But With Less Clutter)
Twitter was created for everyone, but it’s initial adopters were primarily adults. These social media addicts of drinking age enjoyed the fact that they could interact with folks, the way they did on MySpace, without needing to create some blinged out profile or fill out a bunch of useless interest fields. Teens who were used to profile pages filled with videos, slideshows and other candy weren’t impressed by Twitter. Adults, on the other hand, were wowed by the faster response time on Twitter, as people obsessively checked updates from their Twitter apps of choice on their mobile devices. Adults could use Twitter to market/whore out whatever they were selling, just like on MySpace, but faster. They could share links and useless info (like with bulletins) but again, with faster results. What do adults like more than babies? Instant gratification & results, especially when it comes to money, recognition and fame.
You Heard It Here First (Now Tell Everyone)
Like MySpace, Twitter allows anyone with a semblance of public notoriety to cut out the middle man who once functioned as his/her PR person (sorry guys!) and break stories even before the press gets around to it (smart PR folk are on Twitter though). The press is all over Twitter, looking for those mini releases that could be potential stories and sharing their own. How do I know this? Because my work recently did a piece on it and even Gawker posts daily Twitter roundups.
Sure, the fogies are still holding on to their MySpace and Facebook accounts. How else would they keep in touch with their parents? Yep, Twitter is definitely a playground for adults – but not for long.
What R U Doing?
Even though teens primarily continue to update their status via MySpace/Facebook/direct texting, Twitter is quickly catching on with the JoBro demographic as well. Consider that despite the iphone’s pricetag, a lot of apps continue to be marketed to the tween set and that many teen-friendly album releases this year will come bundled with a related (and interactive) iphone app, offering “instant access” to fans on the go. With more celebs (with teen fanbases in tow) on Twitter and youth brands promoting in that space, young people are creating accounts to interact with their interests, enjoying the instant gratification just as much as the adults. These teens are, in turn, creating their own micro communities of tweet connected teen social groups, which means it won’t be long before search.twitter.com searches for “first kiss” will yield more than some late 30-something late bloomer’s blushing confession or whistful nostalgia.
Those black-framed “Buddy Holly” Glasses. Freeway glasses. Geek Chic. Emo. Nerd cool. We use different words to describe the style, but no one can deny their origin and influence in popular culture.
Rarely seen without his trademark black-framed glasses, Buddy Holly was a pioneer of rock and roll. Holly died in his 20’s leaving a legacy that has gone on to influence countless artists and fashion designers.Today was the 50th anniversary of the tragic plane crash that ended the lives of Ritchie Valens, J.P. Richardson, a.k.a. the Big Bopper and Buddy Holly.
Let’s take a look back at a few familiar faces who, from the 1960’s to 2009, adopted the Buddy Holly glasses look and made it their own.
Weezer’s hit “Buddy Holly” was likely the tipping point for the “Buddy Holly Glasses” look to reach the masses in the early 90’s. The music video became so popular that it was included on the Microsoft Windows 95 CD-ROM when the operating system was first released.
Despite the absence of Rivers Cuomo’s own trademark glasses in the video, his signature specs were already on every teen with a computer’s radar.
