Twitter "BLACK OUT": The BET Awards Effect on Trending Topics on Twitter
Last night’s BET Award show was broadcast on the heals of the death of The King of Pop, Michael Jackson. I watched the show live for the FIRST TIME in over 3 years. TiVo has taken over my life and now I watch shows on my time and without the commercial interruptions. I think that is a trend, in busy households, that is climbing. But of course, the untimely death of Michael Jackson shot the BET Awards into the public spotlight, they were reformatting the show and performances to honor him.
The nights activities were capped with a surprise appearance by Ms. Janet Jackson who spoke on behalf of the entire family. She was visibly shaken but true to form, she got through the speech. So lets move on to the business side of this story…
During the entire show, I was tweeting my comment on Twitter from my cell phone. And every once in a while I would go to my PC and look at what others were saying about the show and joining in the conversation by watching the Twitter trending topics, which shows the TOP 10 most popular topic being "Tweeted" on Twitter.
Something happened on the Twitter trending topics that I have NEVER witnessed before, and I am an avid Twitter user. For the the first time EVER 9 of the 10 most popular tweets were all about 1 topic. That is correct, 9 of the 10 hottest topics on Twitter were about the BET Awards show!
What does that mean? How significant is that? I am not completely sure honesty. However in comparison, the season finale of American Idol, which is the number 1 show in America and averaged an audience of 29 million viewers, only took 5 of the 10 trending topics. I am a big fan of Idol and I was again watching it and tweeting during that show too.
What is happening is a fundamental Michael Jackson effect that made MORE Americans, and specifically more African Americans, watch the BET Awards live last night. Of interest is that it looks like the general consensus that Black America is "behind the times in technology" is really a myth. While we as a demographic are NOT in possession of things like laptops and PC’s at the same rate as other demographics in this country, we are ARGUABLY ahead of the curve with MOBILE technology!
Of significance, with Twitter as a platform, is that this technology was created around the mobile platform. Twitter’s limitation of 140 characters per tweet is derived from the fact that Twitter was formulated around SMS text messaging which is a mobile communication medium. So for what some may call a "limitation" of the Twitter platform, I would argue that it is the REASON why Twitter is rising quickly in popularity.
What is quite evident to me is that, mobile is the #1 platform for ecommerce markets going forward. Ringtones SAVED the music industry from sudden death and extended their life for a while longer. Mobile technology turned a little PC company (Apple Computers) into the multi media mogul it has become with its iPhone, and NOW Twitter is growing at a rate of 1200% year over year…So you do the MATH folks?
I am watching because my product lines do favor an urban audience and seeing this trend from the BET Awards is quite clearly URBAN, duh. So now I can see where a good place to tap into my buyers could be…so I get it! Watching what is trending and who is participating is how you find your market and what is fundamentally on their minds.
If you do NOT have some sort of strategy for LISTENING to your customers in 2009-2010….You are at this point IMHO are a complete IDIOT 
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