The comedian Dane Cook apparently believes he is building his brand by pumping out a steady stream of comments on Twitter. Cooks followers receive a regular series of bons mots: Just got my hair cut. When finished she asked me,Do u want any product in your hair? I said sure how about dairy? Cooks comments are so lame and unfunny that what hes actually doing is revealing how little talent he has. Its morbidly fascinating,kind of like the forbidden thrill you get watching professional wrestling. You know its awful. You know you shouldnt enjoy it,yet you cant look away. That is why Ive come to believe that,of all the hellish things that have been spawned in the fever swamp of the Internet,Twitter may turn out to be the most successful of them all not in spite of its stupidity,but because of it. Twitter has become a playground for imbeciles,skeevy marketers,D-list celebrity half-wits,and pathetic attention seekers: Shaquille ONeal,Kim Kardashian,Ryan Seacrest. Sure,some serious people,like George Stephanopoulos and Al Gore,use Twitter. But most of what streams across Twitter is junk. The genius of Twitter is that it manages to be even stupider than TV. Its so stupid that its brilliant. Yes,a guy on Twitter posted the first photos of that US Airways plane crash on the Hudson River in January. Yes,Twitter let the world follow the protests in Iran. But forget all the stuff youve heard from Web gurus about Twitter being useful or important. For most,Twitter is entertainmenta giant TV channel with millions of shows. Almost all of them are garbage. A decade ago,media pundits were talking about interactivity being the next big thing. Their mistake was thinking interactivity meant making movies where you could choose which ending you wanted to see. Turns out interactive entertainment is stuff like Twitter. Twitter has been around since 2006,but it really took off earlier this year after Oprah Winfrey began using it. In August the site drew 25 million unique visitors,up from 2 million a year ago,according to Nielsen. Twitter has raised $55 million in venture funding,and some pundits claim the company could command more than $1 billion in an acquisition. Until recently Ive tended to dismiss that talk as hype-fueled Silicon Valley raving. But Twitter has rounded up a big audience at a time when audiences everywhere are shrinking. Dismissing Twitters potential would be like looking at TV in 1948 and writing it off as a fad. Someday,probably soon,Twitter is going to start pushing advertisements onto its network. Its ad revenues will be a trickle,but Twitter can survive on those pennies because Twitter doesnt pay for content folks like Dane Cook provide the material for free. Who cares if hes not funny? The venture capitalists behind Twitter will be laughing all the way to the bank.
