Twitter power

Here's an e-mail I got this morning, from a publicist friend, Patch Canada. Look what Twitter did for her! (Thanks, Patch, for giving me permission to put this on the blog.)

Hi Greg -

I was absolutely blown away by Twitter last night and felt compelled to share it with you since you and I have talked about the usefulness of Twitter.

Did you happen to see my Tweet yesterday about Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel doing a free live in-store performance at Waterloo Records in Austin? We had this in-store performance scheduled sans Willie. About 30 minutes before the performance I get a call from the powers that be saying that Willie will indeed be showing up (He wanted to surprise Ray Benson and fans).

So, I post the short tweet (with maybe one or two Austin followers) and then start to pull out my TV and print contacts which took about 5 minutes. I made one call to the Austin Chronicle  and chatted with the music editor for 3 or 4 minutes.  This is important because it's now T-minus 21 minutes until this performance. I then call the FOX affiliate newsroom.  The news desk says, "Oh, yes, we know. One of our editors just saw it on Facebook." I kept dialing and kept getting similar answers from photo desks and TV assignment editors.

At 5pm Austin time, there were a sea of people at Waterloo Records, an entire press corps and the only people that were surprised were Asleep at The Wheel and Willie Nelson who didn't know that people already knew!  I have NEVER in my life seen anything like it.

Behold the power of social networking sites!
As Patch and I have said to each other in Twitter direct messages (private messages using Twitter, for those who don't know) -- it's Twitter's speed that's new. And quite amazing. 
February 27, 2009 1:37 PM | | Comments (3)

3 Comments

By Carl Gopal on March 2, 2009 12:05 AM

Technology is wonderful, I'm not here to deny that. But I can't help thinking that in a networking-Twitter-Facebook-MyEverything-crazed society, Jane Austin's Mr Darcy would never have met Elizabeth Bennett, because no doubt about it, Lizzy would eschew a Blackberry for a Moleskin anyday, and be shunted somewhere out the back with the grannies and those with a bad case of gas. But I think her sisters would jump at the chance of speed-dating. Go Twitter:)

By Wendy Rosenfield on March 2, 2009 4:08 PM

Greg, you know I have to weigh in on this!

I'm still constantly amazed by the resistance to using Twitter I get from other journalists and editors. You'd think that with the news biz in the state it's in those who still have jobs would be thrilled to find an easy app that increases readership with almost no effort, and absolutely no expense. Alas.

Keep on evangelizing--maybe you'll save a few souls/jobs in the end.

I'm trying! Thanks for your encouragement. Wendy's exemplary and fun tweets (about theater, her field, and life and kids) are at twitter.com/WendyRosenfield. Terrific demonstration of how social media blend professional life and personal life.

By Larry Murray on March 2, 2009 9:17 PM

Too bad someone didn't Twitter Joe the Plumber's appearance for a recent booksigning. Only a few people turned up for that. Do you suppose a Twitter would help anyone other than a major entertainment figure?

Of course. It helped me, a couple of weeks ago, when two things I'd written spread very rapidly, after I twittered about them. Because twitter is public -- anyone can see every tweet that anyone writes -- I was able to see people I didn't know telling everyone who followed them about what I wrote.

Major entertainment figures will obviously get more support than the rest of us. But all of us can very quickly muster whatever support we do have, with Twitter.

On this subject, by the way, see my friend Amanda Ameer's post, in her Life's A Pitch blog, about how even the smallest arts organizations can emulate the very splashy things the Metropolitan Opera does to get attention. Go to her blog (it's on ArtsJournal) and search for it.

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Age of the French classical audience 
From time to time, people have mentioned in comments here a French government study that supposedly shows that the French classical music audience is very young, with a median age of 38.

I've never been able to find the source for this number. From some of what's been said, I get the idea that it's on a flyer handed out at concerts.

But the French Ministry of Culture tells a different story. You can go here to see the results of their 2008 study of French concert attendance, made available as a PDF file. Or go here if you'd like the numbers in an Excel spreadsheet. (Or here for an overview page, from which you can find out more about the study.)

The numbers are expressed in absolute terms -- the number of people (in hundreds) in various age groups who attended classical concerts in the year the survey covered. And they're broken down by age groups.

From that, it's easy to find what percentage of the French classical music audience falls into the age groups the study specifies:

15-19               4%
20-24               4%
25-34             10%
35-44             18%
45-54             15%
55-64             24%
65 and over    26%
So this median age of 38 seems to be a myth. If we believe the French Ministry of Culture (which has been conducting these surveys for years), fully one-quarter of the French classical music audience is 65 or above. And exactly half of it -- 50% -- is 55 or older.

That means its median age is something around 55. (Since the median would be the point at which half the population in the study is older, and half is younger.)

This should advance the discussion that's erupted here in comments from time to time, about the age of the classical music audience in Europe. Some people think it's lower than it is in the US. But not in France, apparently.

Can anyone point me toward figures for other countries?

(Many thanks to Claudine Verdier- Dievochka for the links to these numbers. Here's her website.)


Age of the audience 
Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Reality: It used to be younger -- dramatically younger, in fact. Here's some evidence -- primary sources (actual texts of old studies, links to NEA studies) -- plus two of my blog posts on this subject, and some anecdotal data.
more

earlier resources

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Sandow published on February 27, 2009 1:37 PM.

Noise at concerts -- the sports connection was the previous entry in this blog.

Trust the audience is the next entry in this blog.

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