LIFE MOVES PRETTY FAST...

Is Adland the new Detroit?

I have been thinking quite a bit about Detroit since Guardian journalist (and ex neighbour of mine when I lived in Fort Greene, Brooklyn) Gary Younge posted a Facebook link about the breath-takingingly beautiful and unbelievably sad photographs of Detroit by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

I had never really thought of Detroit being a beautiful city but the photographs prompted me to look into the history of the city. Detroit was once the 4th largest city in the US, a emblem of American power, industry and commerce - hugely profitable, hugely powerful. And today, a city shell.

How did it happen? This was a city designed around one industry - the automotive industry. One industry with one set way of working - one end product, a linear production line and factories that got bigger and bigger and bigger. Technology flattened the world, consumer demand changed but the US motor companies fiddled around the edges of their industry without seemingly comprehending the magnitude of change. There's an apocryphal story of one of the motor execs going to DC to ask for money for a bail out. He travelled there on his private Lear jet and was then driven from the airport in an enormous stretch-limo  and then couldn't understand why his pleas to help save his industry were falling on incredulous ears. They just did not get it.

Could Adland be the new Detroit? Big, bloated and top-heavy with a lack of real innovation baked in?

There's an article in the Huffington Post in which John Kao says :

The city needs a strategy, it needs a vision of how it can turn itself into a 21st century city, attractive to talent, with a critical mass of R&D and a revitalized approach to education, fresh thinking. It needs to go for the brass ring — incremental innovation will not save it — nor will the four casinos and other tourist amenities that have been put in to make the city a tourist destination. Only a fresh re-thinking of the strategy, the sources of future wealth and the willingness to make the investment of time, treasury and effort will see the city through.

So applicable to our industry.

One of the photographs that I have highlighted here is the Vanity Ballroom in downtown Detroit, such an apt name. As an industry we have to stop re-arranging the chairs in our Vanity Ballroom and start planning for fundamental and profound changes in  communications landscape and in consumer demand.

Oh and buy the book on Amazon, it is wonderful.

What Twitter means

There's a good article in this week's Observer about Twitter by Gaby Hinscliff. She spoke to a number of people who used it and asked what Twitter means to them:

Ian Rankin (@Beathhigh)

I work from home and work on my own. Twitter connects me to the outside world, and makes it feel as though I'm in a huge, airy office full of funny, well-informed people. It gives me instant news, clever jokes, views, and reactions. Fans of my books can contact me, and I can let them know what I'm up to.

Twitter is also my diary. I can scroll back through my tweets and recall what I was up to on any particular day. I keep in touch with friends, make new ones, renew old acquaintances, and sometimes am even gifted ideas for stories. All from my office chair, in 140 characters (which also makes it a fantastic daily exercise in editing and concision).

Ian Rankin is an author and the creator of the Rebus crime novels

Tracey Thorn (@tracey_thorn)

Twitter is where I go for jokes and sympathy. It's hard to be humorous in song lyrics. When you write a song, you want it to be listened to over and over again, and funny lyrics very soon become extremely irritating. So Twitter is an outlet for the frivolous, the irreverent, the throwaway comment. It's also a good place to share arcane bits of information.

It's not so good for expressing serious opinions. Twitter is at its most annoying when everyone gets up on their high horse about something. But it appeals to the economist in me. It imposes rules and sets limits, which I like. Use fewer words. Use shorter words. Get to the point. And try to be funny.

Tracey Thorn is one half of the band Everything But the Girl

Jemima Khan (@JemimaGoldsmith)

I dipped a toe in. It seemed like a place that gave monomaniacs a tannoy: so little space to say so little, Facebook for an older wastrel. I loitered, tweetless. I acquired 15 patient followers. I felt forced onto the stage with a mic and no speech.

That was a year ago. Now, I'm a promiscuous twitterer. I use Twitter for up-to-the minute news, for aphorisms, jokes and links to obscure and interesting articles. I use it for charity as well as inanity. I use it to reply to Glenda Slaggs. I use it as a very resourceful directory. I use it as a friend to whom I can say "that's bollocks" when there's no one else around. Twitter never sleeps. It has revolutionised the way I procrastinate.

Jemima Khan is a writer and campaigner

Victoria Coren (@VictoriaCoren)

I use Twitter in its most basic function: as an antidote to loneliness. I don't think you're supposed to admit that, if you're on TV sometimes and have a lot of followers. But if I claimed I use it purely to promote my work, or practise the art of the polished one-line joke, I'd be lying. I use it just as the most cynical anti-Twitter ranter imagines: to see who's eating toast or who's got a cold, and to feel part of a community. No shame in that. It's fun. If you fancy watching an election debate with 100,000 people, doing it this way saves a lot of trips to Tesco. The connections are brief but real. They're a bonus to life, not an alternative. We're all passing through this valley; why not smile at fellow travellers on the way?

Victoria Coren is an author, poker player and Observer columnist

Ory Okolloh (@kenyanpundit)

I don't have time to catch up on the various blogs, newspapers, TV stations, etc that I'd like to track, so I use Twitter quite a bit as a news curator of sorts – and love the way I can regularly stumble on something I ordinarily wouldn't. I also find it a good source of "cocktail hour" material that makes me sound smarter than I am. A surprise use: I have found it to be a fantastic way to network and make connections in person, especially when I travel. I tweet in the same way I used to blog: sharing thoughts mainly about Kenya, Africa and tech. Finally, I confess I use it a lot to procrastinate and escape my always overwhelming inbox.

Ory Okolloh is Google's Africa policy manager, and the co-founder of crisis-mapping site Ushahidi.com and political site Mzalendo.com

People still ask me to explain what it is about Twitter that I find so unrelentlessly fascinating, useful and entertaining. I might just forward them these explanations as they sum it up brilliantly.

• Twitter is my version of an RSS feed full of news and stats, jokes and ideas.
• Twitter is my lifeline out of a sea of boredem when I am stuck on public transport.
• Twitter is my cyber Solomon.

The thing with Twitter like all technology you have to use it in order to genuinely understand it. And using it doesn't mean simply setting up a profile and then waiting for a cascade of brilliance to fall onto your screen because it won't. Using it means finding, following, engaging, responding, building a community and being part of a community.

Twitter is utterly invaluble to me.