Hordes of Twitter fans have spoken out against Twitter's integration with the television industry, even causing the world's top Twitterer, Ashton Kutcher, to threaten a hiatus from the microblogging service. Many have adopted #nottwittertv as an anti-Twitter TV calling card, and @No_tweet_show has turned into a central location against the idea. Simply put: Twitter TV is a bad idea.
Plans to turn Twitter into a small-screen entertainment were revealed on Monday. Twitter is taking a hands-off approach to the project, claiming that while it is excited about the prospect of Twitter TV, it will have no direct hand in production. This is sounding like a sane approach to what is quickly becoming a publicly reviled project via the very medium the TV program hopes to tap.
Details about the program have yet to emerge, but the gist of it has been explained as "putting ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format." I imagine the "plotline" involves people spotting celebrities, tweeting it, and then a gaggle of crazed competitors rushing to that location before the celebrity disappears.
"It's all fun and games until somebody gets stalked," Kutcher wrote on his feed. Kutcher also commented that he didn't like "being sold out" and that it "sounds like a crap show anyway." Hate to say it, but I agree with him. If not for celebrity endorsements and participation, Twitter would not be where it's at today. Some believe the site would be better served without celebrities, and this may be true, but from a business standpoint, it is people like Kutcher and Oprah who are holding Twitter's financial future in their palms. To then turn around and ask Twitterers to blatantly stalk these individuals in the streets is an affront to decency and a classic case of biting the hand that feeds. That, and it really does sound like a crap show.