Stockholm syndrome and the Twitter outage



Contributing Writer
Photo: Pigeon in Winter Credit: (withheld)


If yesterday’s Twitter outage showed anything, it was that life continues to go on without it…. much to the chagrin of users everywhere.

Because of its unique simplicity – Twitter is destined to be a strong ancillary platform to social networks better suited for mass-consumption.  But as a primary source for a majority of journos, the social network best suited to real-time interaction, and the platform offering the largest reach for expended resources – it has become deeply entrenched in our culture even informing a majority of people who don’t use it.

Many stories ran in the news about users taking to Facebook, Google Plus and even Tumblr to find solace and share their frustrations, and it made me wonder if an event as disruptive as this in the lives of so many habitual users could prompt people to use those other networks more often (to Twitter’s detriment)?

According to Wikipedia, Stockholm syndrome is a “psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them.”  I wonder if the extraordinary time investment that social media involves for many people would lend itself to some sort of affinity towards these fallback networks that were available when Twitter wasn’t?  As preposterous as that might sound, if Facebook went down for an equivalent amount of time I would imagine there would be plenty of talk about alternative social networks.

It could very well be that people are quite forgiving to Twitter despite its outage – and it could also be that Twitter performs such a unique function that spending less time there is unrealistic for people.  I’ll be very curious to see the results of Comscore and Neilsen’s next social measurements to understand how important reliability is to social consumers.

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Jim Dougherty

Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is “social media research,” I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred’s 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout’s most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven’t entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.

Jim Dougherty

@jimdougherty

Jim Dougherty

Jim Dougherty

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  • http://just-ask-kim.com Kimberly Castleberry

    I think that Stockholm Syndrome works the other way around here. Twitter is the captor and this phenomena causes people to forgive the downtime, bugs and grievances they have with the platform. The same is true with Facebook addicts during the sites downtime. I don’t think this spills into appreciation of the other platforms (though it does create more understanding of them through forced use). People make exorbitant apologies for the platforms which hold their time, energy, and focus hostage ala addiction behavior.
    Kim

  • http://leaderswest.com Jim Dougherty

    Nice Kim! I thought about it from that angle too but didn’t think it was so straightforward to explain. You did it effortlessly! There certainly is a psychology to our online activities! Thank you so much for reading and commenting!

  • http://www.smartbizblog.com Trent

    … and yet this complete and utter reliance on having Twitter always online is not worrying in the least? I think it’s scary a species that we are so fragile as to get worked up about not being able to share what we “reckon” at any given point during the day :)

  • http://leaderswest.com Jim Dougherty

    Great point, Trent! How did we sate our egos before social media? It really has ushered in a new aspect of our lives and it’s interesting to see how different people adjust. Thanks for reading and for taking the time to comment!

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