Friday March 27th, 2009
The Twitter 'Cisco Fatty' saga: Interesting follow up

If you've been reading this blog, you'll know I'm a big fan of the Feiler Faster Thesis , which (basically) says that in this era of networked communication and 24/7 news cycles, ideas go burbling along quietly in the background, until suddenly some kind of 'event' happens, the media all pick up on it at once, and within 48 hours, the general public goes from "barely aware of this idea" to "everyone's talking about it everywhere".

This week that happened with Twitter.

Oh sure - Twitter has been growing fast (from 2 million subscribers to 6+ million in the past 6 months alone), but it definitely wasn't mainstream.

Then the Big Event happened: the 'Cisco Fatty' incident. Predictably, it was the Twitterverse and blogosphere (heck, we blogged about it, too!) which lit up fast and furious, but it was such a darn good story that it quickly jumped to the mainstream media.

Last Friday, 80% of my co-workers and friends had no idea what Twitter was, less than 2% of them had ever visited the site, and none of them knew or cared what I meant when I said "I'm up to 138 followers!"

Today - just 7 days later - everyone at the office is talking about Twitter, and half of them have started tweeting too!

(Add to that the whole 'Jennifer Aniston broke up with John Mayer because he was tweeting instead of spending time with her' story and you've got one heck of a publicist's dream - if, of course, you're the publicist for Twitter!)

Interestingly, there's a follow up: Connor Riley - the guy who posted the Cisco fatty tweet in the first place - has posted a blog about the whole thing (it's a shame that he doesn't have GoogleAds on the site - he could have made a packet this week!) to explain his side of the story.

(He doesn't excuse himself: he admits it was a stupid thing to do, but with only a handful of followers at the time - less than 50 - he never dreamed that his tweets would ever be seen by anyone outside his group of friends. And heck, if you're just one of 6+ million people tweeting away, it's hard to believe that your little tweets to your little group of friends would ever be noticed amidst all the other noise.)

I think that's what I like best about all this social media stuff: Connor Riley - just a guy and a blog - has the ability to reach millions of people. Sure, the mainstream media probably won't be as quick to report on his side of the story as they were to pick up the debacle in the first place, but he's not entirely powerless against the media juggernaut which rolled over his life this week. And we don't have to rely on apocryphal tales of Whatever Happened To That Cisco Fatty Guy - he's put it out there, in a more or less permanent record.

Anyhow, just something to think about if you were considering signing up to Twitter over the weekend...

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About the Authors

Paul Dodd
Co-founder and President
Head2Head Canada

Paul has one simple goal: To help companies hire great people - and get the most out of every recruiting dollar they spend. That's why he's recognized as one of the best recruitment-industry thinkers in Canada.

Sarah Welstead
Director, User Experience
Head2Head

Passionate about recruitment branding and delivering great candidate experiences, Sarah is a frequent author and media commentator on older workers and generational trends in the talent market.

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