The Measurement Meme & Twitter as Backchannel

I was sitting here actively measuring social media tools.  I'd been working for about two solid days on performance measures for a few of my Social Media clients.

Then in Twitter, someone mentioned the "measurement meme", but it was in passing and I didn't get the gist.

So, I used TerraMinds to get the gist.  Right after that, I checked my feed that follows social media tagged blog posts started spitting out measurement meme posts.  Of course, all this happened during my blogging hiatus.

So, I want to write about measuring social media, but I'm actually more interested right now in the measurement meme itself as a meme and how it came into my consciousness.

For me, I left the social media world for about 2 months - which sounds like a short time.  But it was at least long enough to miss this meme.

Today, someone mentions it in passing in a non-blog venue.  I take a look at the history of the conversation, seeing it stretch back a month or so.  I find out the players, check my del.icio.us tags, and very quickly have the entire meme unfold for me. 

Chronologically.

It appears that Twitter is quickly becoming a blogging backchannel.  This is different, I think, than "microblogging".  Microblogging has always had an air of its own matter stream.  i.e. things that happpen in a microblogging realm are in some way self-contained.

But now it seems that Twitter is a parallel tract to blogging.  As things are blogged, they are rapidly discussed in Twitter and responses are then blogged.  Almost like Twitter is saying, "Here's something to thing about, go think, then blog and let us all know when you're done."

Twitter mining makes this workable.  Before, you couldn't look back very far in Twitter land for meaningful information.  Now it's all there.  Who said what, when, and in response to whom?

Interesting.

Technorati Tags: twitter, terraminds, measurement meme, backchannel

Comments

[Connie Bensen]

How almost eerie is this?
Earlier, you followed me on Twitter.

On my netvibes page that I've been playing with - I have it opening to a blog search for 'social media'. I clicked on the title 'measurement meme' and it brings me to this post. And your screenshot tells the rest of the story!

Is it a small world or what? (we know that it isn't here).