Debra Baker · @mamadeb1963
7th Feb 2011 from Twitlonger
I'm thrilled with Adam being on the social media summit - and I think he was chosen for some very good reasons. One is that he is very intelligent and eloquent - he's going to be able to contribute a great deal to the panel along with the people from Facebook, Foursquare and Pandora. Another is that his fanbase is very much internet based, so it's appropriate.
But also, Adam makes excellent use of Twitter. No, he doesn't use it much for self-promotion. But do we really want him to? Those artists who do quickly get annoying. We don't want to follow them because their feeds are only about THEM and selling, not a means of communication.
He also doesn't tweet a lot. While this is frustrating to us, we also know that, barring the occasional weather report, his tweets mean something. He doesn't do random jokes, or give us TMI (or, really, much "I" at all). He tweets when he has something to say.
This means they get quoted (and occasionally MISquoted everywhere, so that "Let's throw glitter on this barn" gets interpreted as a celebration of a court decision about marriage rights instead of a way of dealing with a terrible venue.) And he's gotten a decent reputation for making pithy, to the point statements about events - his tweet about Kanye, which he made during the Idol tour, got a lot of exposure.
He's also used Twitter to control his own publicity, and done it masterfully. HE gave us the first words about the pap incident, and so was able to present the story properly before anyone else could spin it differently. Twice in the past week he's used it to straighten out gossip reports about his personal life in a non-confrontational but very effective way.
And of course, we love his rumor control - when he quashes a rumor, it stays quashed. Mostly. (Some people just don't get the message about his bass player.)
Even his occasional rants have made a difference - interviewers think more about the questions they ask him, or at least apologize for asking the same old ones. He's quoted favorably when it comes to his views on certain reality shows. But it also shows him as open and honest to a fault - someone who isn't afraid to voice an opinion or articulate the reasons behind it. This makes him trustworthy.
His latest posts, the ones that sound sad, have their own messages. He's willing to pay the price of lack of privacy, but he really doesn't want other people - like Taylor - misrepresented. When he did that tweet about being bullied (#forcefeild up), he showed what he deals with every day, and how HE deals with it.
BTW, I'm beginning to think that was not random or Adam being depressed. That series of tweets - the question, the retweet and the response - ties in directly with his It Gets Better video and the new Aftermath revamp he's donating to the Trevor Project. It shows those kids that they are, in fact, not alone and that there are things they can do. (It also called his fans to action, and got that person banned. Good job all around. Death threats are bad things.)
We also know he likes to promote other people. While it would be nice if he spent more time promoting himself, or if more of those people responded in kind or with thanks, it's also a great thing for his image. No, I don't think he does that on purpose. He believes in spreading karma, so he wants to share his good fortune with his friends for one, and for the other - I really see him as listening to a piece of music or watching a video and getting all excited about it and so tweeting it out. It's not calculated at all. (As opposed to self-promotion, which wold be.) But it also shows him as generous and positive, two excellent character traits.
And then we get to what he seems to do best - galvanize people into positive action. He tweets about Haiti - donations pour in. He tweeted about Donors Choose during that campaign, and it grew and grew. And now he has his fanbase ensuring that thousands of people have clean water, and doing it with only a occasional tweet for encouragement. But that campaign and his few tweets are getting him even more positive notice.
(And, of course, he uses it to tell his fanbase to NOT harass radio stations. Or to buy things. And we obey. Mostly.)
Adam is, in fact, using Twitter quite effectively - not to tell us the minutia of his life in constant "twats", but to communicate who and what he is to the world. And this is why he is an excellent person for that panel. He just needs a decent spellcheck.