View From the Phlipside - Most Important Tweets?

These are the scripts from my weekly media commentary program on WRFA-LP Jamestown

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the movies and more. I love 'em and I hate em' and I always have an opinion. Call this the view from the Phlipside

Now I know I just finished last year by wondering why I spent so much time talking about Twitter, the micro-blogging service that I'm not entirely sure I buy just yet. So naturally we will begin the New Year with....a program about Twitter.

But when I saw the folks over at buzzmarketing today had put together a list of the "10 Most Important Tweets of the Year" I just couldn't resist. Since I'm not sure it's possible to say something important in 140 characters I wanted to see if they could change my mind by showing me the light. So let's see what they have to offer.

Numbers 9 and 10 didn't do much for me. Number ten was a tweet from Google where they printed their catch phrase "I'm Feeling Lucky" in binary. If you're a computer code geek maybe that's cool. Number nine was from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg assuring everyone that yes it was really him. That was it. Let's see we also got a tweet from the Yankees victory parade by a player, we discovered that Oprah Winfrey is some kind of internet newb since her first tweet was IN ALL CAPS! A tweet from an astronaut and one from Ashton Kutcher. I'll admit there's only a subtle difference there. And at number one was a tweet from Barak Obama. From November of 2008. Ummm, isn't this the 2009 list? Yes it is, but apparently they couldn't come up with 10 that could even pretend to be important. And all of these so far are definitely pretenders to the crown.

Were there ANY tweets of any importance? Actually I'd give at least a probationary nod to three. All of them showed Twitter's ability to advance the concept of instant coverage of current events. These would be a tweet following the emergency plane landing in the Hudson river, Michael Jackson's death and news from inside Iran as anti-government forces protested and were being suppressed. To my amazement these three finished at numbers four, five and seven respectively. That put them behind the astronaut, Ashton Kutcher and the slightly out of date Obama tweets.

So those are the ten most important tweets of the year. At least according to one source. The latest update on show topics from The Phlipside didn't make it somehow. I'm rather astounded by that actually. Surely my withering analysis of the Jay Leno show deserved at least a mention. No? There is another possibility, of course. That Twitter really IS just a vehicle for minor marketing efforts and major ego massage.

Call that the view from the Phlipside