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Holy Shit! Real-Time Tweets.

The last post about the Super Bowl, I promise. And this post is not really about the Super Bowl, it’s about the breakthrough that is REAL. TIME. TWEETS. As you may know, Beyonce blew out the power at the Super Dome, and sent the Super Bowl and all its fans into full-on p(f)andemonium. The commentators were strangely quiet, the stadium was blindingly dark, fans forgot who they were rooting for and…people started to tweet about things…AS. THEY. HAPPENED.

Yep, I know: Crazy, but true.

@footballdad71 said “who turned out the lights?”

@kimmyknowles said “oh yes she did just blow the power out.
#beyonce”

And @Oreos even tweeted, encouraging people to relax, reminding them that you can dunk in the dark. And it had an image.

Some suggest Oreo hi-jacked the Super Bowl. Some go as far as saying it was the tweet heard round the world. I say…“Seriously, people?” It’s 2013, and we’re this excited, nay, enlivened by a contextual tweet? That’s what the platform was built for. To talk about things as they happen.

My colleagues think I’m drinking haterade, that I’m just too digital for my own good, and they tell me it’s amazing because the Oreo post was like art directed, and approved by the marketing team and junk, within minutes. But let’s be real. It’s an Oreo sitting against a faded background, with one line of copy. And while fearing sounding too glass-half-empty, I really think this whole hooplah about the tweet heard round the world is a true reflection of a great portion of the advertising industry. Slow, to the party, and even slower when it comes to chugging the beer.

I’m not making fun of Oreo- or the people that use Twitter to be quick and clever- I think it’s smart. I’m making fun of the fact that it has been treated like it’s a breakthrough, or innovation, of maximum unseen before proportions.  It’s really just an example of a tool used simply and wicked smartly.

It just took the industry seven years to get there.

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