What the Buck interview about Twitter!

By Buck on Sep 3, 2009 in Press

Just Get Over It
Internet star Michael Buckley, of the “What the Buck?” YouTube video blog, talks about why Twitter kicks ass
Thursday, September 03, 2009
By Brianna Snyder

Michael Buckley — Internet superstar, Connecticut native — is a passionate Twitter enthusiast. Buckley’s the star and creator of the pop-culture chat show/vlog “What the Buck?” on YouTube, where he racks up hundreds of thousands to millions of hits. He has has more than 95,000 followers on Twitter. And he gets about 100 more a day, he told me in a recent phone interview. Next week, Buckley’s speaking at a Mark Twain House forum about Twitter, and what Mark Twain’s thoughts might’ve been on tweeting.

Buckley said he’s not a Twain expert, but “I seem to know a lot about Twitter,” he said. “Whatever people ask, I’ll be ready to answer.” He’s a huge fan of the site.

“Every day I hear Whoopi Goldberg on ‘The View’ saying, ‘I don’t have time to Twitter,’” he said. “Twitter takes two seconds! Give me a break. The people who hate on Twitter are the same people who hated on VCRs. ‘Oh my God, VCRs are gonna ruin everything.’ It’s so stupid.”

In March, Michael Arrington wrote for Tech Crunch that “Twitter is, more than anything, a search engine.” That’s just one argument against those misperceiving Twitter as solely an outlet for egocentric teenagers to chirp about the minutiae of their day-to-day lives. Others consider Twitter a networking, marketing, news-ticking tool, where information explodes.

“I like that Twitter breaks news now,” he said. “We all used to hang out on Yahoo News. Now we hang out on Twitter. It’s really changed the game.”

Though he frequently tweets about silly or funny stuff, and swaps personal notes with different users, he also keeps up with current events and news. One recent tweet reads, “OMG! Congrats Diane Sawyer!! I will be watching ABC evening news every night now! Cant believe View is on vaca! First the Emmy now this!” (Charlie Gibson announced yesterday that he was stepping down from ABC’s “World News.” Sawyer is taking his place.)

He added that Twitter isn’t like MySpace or Facebook in that you’re required or expected to reveal personal details. “You don’t have to share any information or any pictures,” he said. “It’s just a great networking tool and it’s a great marketing tool. People who hate on Twitter are so stupid!”

I asked Buckley about who he likes to follow, and what he thinks are the best tweets. He said he thinks a lot of celebrity tweeters are lame. Though Ryan Seacrest’s radio-show producer Natalie Eshaya, or Negative Natalie, is one of his favorite tweeters.

“I think [Demi Moore] and Punky Brewster are so boring. You think these people are so interesting but they’re so boring. They’re the most boring people in the world. I like to follow people who say funny things or interesting things.” He said Twitter’s not effective as an impersonal outlet for self-promotion. Many celebrities rarely tweet, and when they do they post a link to a new movie or record or whatever. “If I used Twitter solely to promote myself, people wouldn’t follow me. I mean, yesterday I was tweeting about peeing sitting down,” he said.

He hates depressing tweets too, he told me, practically shouting, “If 12 of your 14 tweets a day are depressing you need to go to a therapist and get off the Internet! I like funny, light-hearted, good-news tweets. I hate the bad-news ones. … It’s important to know you can follow and unfollow people. People are sensitive about it, but I’m like, ‘Get over it.’”

And he said he’s totally over Facebook, too. It’s boring.

“The two or three times that Twitter’s gone down, we’re all back on Facebook and we’re like, Why do we have to be on Facebook? And we can’t even remember our passwords,” he said.

“I hope they don’t jazz [Twitter] up with too many complicated applications and stuff,” he continued. “I hope that it stays simple. I don’t want any fancy bells and whistles. Facebook got a little confusing, or boring. I just got over it. I love Twitter!” (He’s right, by the way. An article about Facebook losing its luster has been “trending” on the New York Times’ Web site all week.)

Buckley’s advice for people just getting started on Twitter, and who are sort of miffed by the whole thing, is just to find and follow the people you know and start following a newspaper or magazine you like. You can’t fully get into or experience “social networking” if you’ve got nobody to connect with. Buckley said he uses Twitter all the time, just while watching TV. He likes to keep dialogue going during his favorite shows, and people from all over jump in on the discussions. They stay careful not to give too much away, lest they spoil something for people in different time zones.

I asked him what he tells those who have doubts about Twitter. He said he can’t deal with people “poo-pooing” the site. “I’ll go all up in their grille,” he said. “Look at someone like me, making a living utilizing a social media tool.”

The forum, called “What Would Twain Tweet?” is on Sept. 15 at the Mark Twain House. Panelists, along with Buckley, include Brent Robertson of the Hartford ad agency Fathom, the Twain House’s “media socialite” Caitlin Thayer, and president of Boston, Mass.’s Woodhouse Agency Greg Wood.

What the Buck interview about Twitter!

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