We’re all well aware that Twitter represents man’s best chance of Redemption. No one’s disputing that. What is in dispute today is just how representative Twitter is of The Real World. Case in point: TNA Wrestling made its long awaited move to Monday nights this week, and all throughout the night “TNA” was a trending topic on Twitter. We’ve been led to believe that anything that trends on Twitter is hugely important, not merely in the cozy confines of the Twitterverse, but all over Planet Earth. Explain this, then: the show only drew a 0.98 rating (it rounds up to a 1.0). I thought Twitter = ratings?
Right, so all throughout the night, “TNA” was all over the Twitter, and it was trending for the duration of the broadcast. Clearly people on the terribly important Web site thought highly of the show. Too bad nobody else did.
The show only drew a 0.98 rating, which is pretty much the disappointment of all disappointments. I mean, you had Hulk Hogan vs. Ric Flair on American TV for the first time in something like 10 years. If that’s not a ratings draw, then I don’t know what is. (A successful rating would have been in the neighborhood of 1.3.)
It speaks to the perception that Twitter is God. If it’s on Twitter, by golly, then everyone must be talking about it. Clearly not.
Twtiter has something like 75 million registered accounts, of which only 10-15 million of them can be considered active. And who knows how many of those active accounts are nothing but annoying bots? As soon as we write something here, something like 20 bots automatically re-tweet it. Imagine how many bots are re-tweeting popular sites!
There’s a whole lot to TNA’s rubbish rating, chief among them terrible build-up and terrible promotion. Why would you spend the time it takes to create a movie for your YouTube account, which has all of 9,000 subscribers, when you could have used that same time to create a video package to air on your TV show, where a lot more than 9,000 people are watching? Using social media to promote your product when you’re already on prime time TV is beyond dumb.
The point? There really isn’t one, I’m just sort of bored and wanted to write about the TNA rating. If there’s a lesson to be drawn here, it’s to not think of Twitter as the end-all, be-all of “what’s what” in America.