blog twitter and volvos.

Imagine a world where everyone drove Volvos...

 

Whether driving in bright sunlight, dusk, dawn or night, everyone would have their lights on. The A roads and B roads of the UK, during the day, would be headlight-carnage, with everyone competing to be seen. Volvo's concept is that the driver gets noticed for safety reasons. Obviously if everyone followed suit, the principal would be cancelled out.

 

We already have Councils littering the streets with excessive signage telling you to speed up, slow down, watch this, mind that, go here, don't go there. No-one seems to consider signage as a linear experience from the driver's perspective. There should be more crashes, but humans are generally quite good at processing multiple sources of data.

 

Twitter is like the Volvo headlight-dominating world, only the lights are replaced with information-carnage. As a method of social communication, as users increase and usage grows, Twitter's effectiveness diminishes. Users realise their message didn't get noticed, so they repeat it, adding to the light pollution.

 

So, how do tweets get noticed amongst the stream of good and bad, useful and pointless information that relentlessly flows. Horns get beeped and high beams are flashed. New spoilers are attached, fancy paint jobs applied, along with new registration plates saying 'L00K 8 ME'. Next everyone starts beeping and flashing and we're back to square one.

 

Nobody really knows how future tweets will re-invent themselves to get noticed, but the next angle will need creativity. Humour will always work, as will 'free', competitions, insight, novelty, shock, help and fulfilling need. Do you broadcast your message in peak traffic?

 

Although Twitter can be good for finding information by accident, users will probably reduce scanning feeds and start to search more. This will make your amazing announcement harder to locate. You'll get lost in a sea of bright lights.

 

With excess lights and signage bombarding our senses, we should probably keep our eyes on the road a bit more.

 

 

 

(Footnote: The traffic lights near work are switched off prior to the fitting of new ones.  The traffic has never flowed better.)