the "twebinar" experience: connectivity versus conversation

I hopped into the “Game Changing Moves - Doing Business with Social Media” twebinar today, a web seminar featuring streaming video of interview with experts in the field with an active Twitter Backchannel for discussion.

Despite my issues with the over-cute neologism, I was drawn to the idea of a performative promise of a seminar about social media that actually utilizes one of the best social media tools out there.

The experience, however, was a curious one. I’m accustomed to lively, robust backchannel discussions that are frequently more engaging than anything going on onstage at conferences. But what I saw here were declarations, broadcasts expressing support or agreement, but little actual discourse. Perhaps I wasn’t looking at the right tweets, but even still, the problem remains the same: twitter is predominantly a mini-broadcast tool, not built to facilitate tracking or engaging in discussion. While the idea was novel and kind of exciting, in practice I got little out of the backchannel outside a running list of people who were also following it. That, I think, is ultimately the value of this exercise.

It strikes me that we shouldn’t conflate connectivity with conversation. Both are valuable, to be sure. While I didn’t experience a robust conversation about social media through twebinar, I did get linked to people who are thinking around some of the same areas as I am, playing the same spaces. By being able to connect directly to them through twitter, I’ve begun laying the ground work for what may, in the future, become the kind of conversation I had hoped would be possible.