Michelle Malkin scoffed first on her blog: Twitter picked the "Top Tweets of 2011" and ABC News got the "exclusive" right to broadcast the list...and both ridiculously skipped in that top-ten list the biggest Twitter political scandal of the year (and Twitter's five-year existence): now-former Congressman Anthony Weiner's crotch shots. Their criteria was allegedly the level of “impact, resonance, and relevance,” and "the big stories that first broke on Twitter — not by news agencies — but by people looking to share a photo, a thought, or a moment in time with people they may never meet."
Instead, Twitter (and their ABC promoters) insisted it was more notable that a guy joke-tweeted for a Morton's porterhouse at the airport and Morton's decided to show up with a steak for the publicity. Or that bored NBA star Kevin Durant showed up at a flag-football game with old Oklahoma buddies through Twitter. It doesn't pass the laugh test. (By contrast, on December 31, 2010, Sawyer's newscast did mock Sarah Palin using "refudiate" on Twitter in their year in review.)
Sawyer began with the promotional plug: "In this one year, 90 billion messages have been sent on Twitter, the high-octane social network connecting the world, and the folks who run Twitter looked back to come up with the most extraordinary tweets, the ones that tell the story of the year, and ABC’s Cecilia Vega got an exclusive first look.”
Vega plugged away with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey: "Ten tweets, 140 words – a year’s worth of news in 1400 characters, maybe?" Dorsey said “Amazing.” No, what’s amazing is that Twitter and ABC thinks no one can remember Weinergate.
Also on the list: "Julia Probst, a lip reader and soccer fan, reads the lips of soccer players and coaches during matches and tweets them, providing fans with a running dialogue that they would otherwise not be privy to. Her efforts extend beyond soccer to raise awareness for deaf and disabled people in politics and media."
Twitter obviously decided that it doesn't make Twitter look wonderful to have it used as a congressman's sexual thrill-seeking network, with Weiner even exchanging tweets with teenage girls he didn't know on Twitter. That, and it would invite a laugh track when the Twitter founder said on ABC with a straight face: "When technology is great, it reminds us of our humanness. And it connects us in a very human way."
(HT: Seton Motley)
