MTV’s Video Music Awards were yesterday. While you’d think a site devoted to videos and music such as this one would be all over that, it’s no secret that the VMAs have about as much to do with Music Videos as Country Time Lemonade has to do with lemons or tasting good. We could talk about Britney looking like some drugged sea lion, Dr. Dre admitting his steriod habit, or even JT ironically asking MTV to play more videos, but none of that really matters. What matters is Twitter and how MTV latched onto the phenomenon for the VMAs.

In case you aren’t familiar with Twitter, let me get you up to speed. Twitter is one of those internet “next big things” like MySpace, Facebook, or YouTube. Like all great things on the internet Twitter is simultaneously pointless and brilliant. In a nutshell Twitter is a very simple way to communicate a very short bit of information to anybody who cares. You have 140 characters to send a message. That’s it. This has largely developed under the guise of answering a simple question: “What are you doing?” For example, right now I just twittered (or “tweeted”) “writing a blog post”. So now, anybody set to receive updates from me knows that I’m writing a blog post. Do they care? Maybe… probably not. Do I care whether they care or not? Maybe… probably not. The point is that I put the info out there. Let’s say tonight I’m going to the Spoon show at the Henry Fonda then I would say “Heading to the Spoon show. Can’t wait to see the dancing robot.” Then people know what I’m up to, maybe they’ll want to try and go to the show once I remind them. Either way, my friends and other random stalkers can know what I’m doing.

If your first response is “that’s stupid, I can already text/IM/email/call people if I want them to know something” then you have missed that “brilliance” that I alluded to earlier. The brilliance with Twitter is that you aren’t talking to anybody in particular. This changes the game as it reduces the “importance” of things that you will communicate. I wouldn’t call or email or text everybody I know just to tell them “I’m writing a blog post”. Nor would I do all that to let everybody know that “I just saw that douche from Laguna Beach/The Hill rapping and he looked like such a jackass that it actually switched from pathetic to awesome.” But I would Twitter these types of things. Some have referred to it as micro-blogging: really quick random thoughts and updates from your friends. It has all the communication power of MySpace or Facebook without all the fat, bloated ugliness. It’s a great way to keep some semblance of casual connection when your relationship or friendship is fragile or dying due to long-distance separation. Sometimes those seemingly pointless little thoughts and updates make all the difference. Like I said: pointless and brilliant.

This brings us to MTV. A few weeks back they announced a partnership with Twitter for their VMAs which I immediately noted as a significant moment. For one, I was shocked that MTV picked up on a social technology trend so quickly. This struck me as a very progressive move for a company known for it’s complacency in the internet space. I think MTV is finally realizing that if they don’t maintain relevance on the internet they will cease to maintain relevance period. Of course, relevance to MTV depends on generating ad-revenue, but more on that later. Second, I was curious what a corporation based on youth culture would do with this very young internet technology. It’s no secret that MTV makes money off of a lifestyle: they exploit musicians to sell a lifestyle to teens and young adults to sell ad revenue. It’s what Bravo is to the gays and what Adult Swim is to cynical college kids and stoners. How would MTV use Twitter to sell their image? I clicked to follow the twitter user “MTV VMA” (which means I would automatically get receive any updates from them) and set sail for adventure.

Of course it was a bloody disaster. At least at first. This is MTV we’re talking about…

What MTV did was set-up a fictional character, the MTV “Moonman” to start twittering his/her/its exploits as the show approached. I think they just wanted to get the ball rolling for the few weeks before the actual VMAs aired, but the result was that I was getting fictional updates from a fictional character. While perhaps representative of MTVs true character, it was an assault to intelligent life and a slap to Twitter’s face. Twitter only works when the messages have real meaning, which means they need to come from real people. Check out the moon-man’s 2nd twitter:

Yo, me again. Sitting in my MTV office surfing blogs instead of getting ready for the VMAs. I can’t stop watching “Chocolate Rain.”

Great, the fictional character’s fictional exploits are more boring than my own life. Awesome. A few days later we get:

Listening to the Young Joc album stream on MTV.com. Can’t wait for tonight’s MSG show!

Now we’re getting shameless corporate self-promotion. Thank you sir may I have another!

In a helicopter headed to Atlantic City (thanks Trump!). gonna brush up on my gamblin’ B4 VMAs in Vegas.

Okay, at least they bumped the twittering up from fictional office employee to fictional celebrity… except no celebrity goes to Atlantic City.

Whoa, it is Britney, b****. Listening to the new single on the blogz. Hot.

Oh Moonman, you’re totally with it, reading those “blogz” that all the kids love. MTV, you do realize your audience couldn’t give two spits about blogs that aren’t on the MySpace page of a 15 year old girl, right? Only jaded, fading hipsters read blogs. Or if they are really jaded, they write them. Trust me.

Is it lame if i buy a t-shirt with a VMA logo?

Yes.

And then suddenly, 3 days before the show, the plane finally stops crashing and we get a beautiful ray of hope. Hip-hopping, producing, muscle-bound hope:

BOUT TO GO TO THE GYM AND WORK OUT -Timbaland

Holy Crap! Timbaland! A real person! And he’s about to go work out! An actual celebrity of some sort just told me what he’s up to! Now this is more like it. (Note: If you saw Timbaland on the show you’d realize he was not kidding about that working out business. The man had guns that were only outclassed by those small midgets Dr. Dre was calling biceps.)

VMA’s…nice! -Daughtry_Joey

Now one of the guys from Daughtry gets in on the fun. He would set a precedent for white people sucking at Twittering. Compare and contrast to Chris Brown:

some shorts. Getting ready for rehearsal its about to be bigg yall get ready… -ChrisBrown_VMA

Okay, Chris Brown is thinking of shorts and going to rehearsal. That’s what I’m talking about! I mean, you assume all these acts must rehearse for these kinds of things but it’s nice to realize that these rich rappers still have to be at certain places at certain times so they can practice sort-of rhyming, somewhat on rhythm (I’m looking at you 50-cent. Get those nickels out of your mouth.). This peering into the day-to-day of the rich and famous is the vein that this twitter/MTV relationship needs to tap.

Roaming around The Palms trying to catch a glimpse of Britney. -mtvmoonman

Moonman, enough out of you! Nobody cares about your fictional corporate exploits when we got Poet Laureate SouljaBoy in the mix…

Im still in the arcade yuuuaa -SouljaBoy_VMA

Now that’s a twitter! If I was in Vegas I would have twittered that exact phrase, letter for letter. Yuuaa!

I just met up wit lil jon he was showin me his new chain -SouljaBoy_VMA

Lil’ Jon and SouljaBoy met to compare chains. It’s just like my dreams, if my dreams were 56 character text messages.

Right now im doin soundcheck with kanye western -SouljaBoy_VMA

Kanye! Celebrity paydirt. And he’s doing a soundcheck with SouljaBoy! I’m officially coining Kanye’s new nickname right here and now: Best Western. You heard it here first.

Nelly Furtado’d VMA pre-party was last night. Everyone who was anyone was in the house…even the Moonman was seen on the floor. -MTVBuzzworth

At some point MTV wisely killed the moonman and replaced him with “MTVBuzzworthy”. Rather than pretend to be real, Buzzworthy liked to report on various happenings and celebrity sightings. It’s kind of like what your friends would have twittered if they were at the VMAs. Okay, but it’s no twitter from Chris Brown:

Yo whats good its ya boy back at chris brown getting read for this crazy performance for the vma’s, alrite yall ttyl -ChrisBrown_VMA

I like how Chris wastes 1/3 of his message on a needless introduction, but then wises up with the “TTYL” for the closer. I told you the non-white guys have a better handle on this Twitter business. Watch another white guy screw it up…

Hey its tom fro m the plain white t’s we just landed after a sold out show in london last night it was amazing glad to be in vegas for t …

He couldn’t even finish his message because he ran out of characters… for shame. But hey, more white people! London, Vegas, blah blah blah: we get it, you’ve made your record label lots of money. While we’re on the topic of white people, lets get some Europeans up in this party

Hej! We’re dancing at Virtual MTV right now. Love connections, too. Come dance with us! -PeterBjornJohn

P,B &J shcilling for MTV. Somewhere some indie rock blog just exploded. Somebody give the Twitter phone back to the hip hop guys, please…

o this Weezy im about 2 give all my MTV fans some exclusive info on this VMA weekend My next album The Carter 3 drops December 18th Mer …VMALilWayne

Self-promotion is fine when it comes from rap artists: they are taught from birth to self-promote at all costs. It’s not cool when it comes from you, MTV, and trying to hide behind some whistling Swedes isn’t going to make it okay. Timbaland, right this ship!

Shopping so i can look goods -Timbaland

Alright. Timbaland hits us with some more words of wisdom. I’m going to make that Twitter into a shirt. It will be my shopping shirt. I’ll wear it when I shop. And then I’ll twitter everybody about it.

When the show actually started the twitters slowed but didn’t stop!

We won best new artist!!! Thanks to all the fans who voted for us. Thanks to crush mgmt for holdin it down.thanks to pete wentz and fall … -MTVGymClassHeroes

Lets forget that he just ruined it for the delayed west coast feed because nobody was biting their nails on that one. Still, I’m sure some the poor MTV intern responsible for the Twittering got bitch-slapped by SuChin Pak for that one.

Stuck in some underground cage somewhere… MTV told us this where the Awards show was, but It’s just bars and a Rancor! Help! -MTVPeopleWhoActuallyDirectedTheVideos

Okay, I made that last one up. But seriously, this show is ridiculous. It’s like Leonardo DiCaprio accepting the award when the Departed wins Best Picture while Martin Scorsese sits at home eating a TV dinner because he wasn’t invited. I’m seriously surprised that the Director’s Guild of America hasn’t raised some sort of objection. Then again, they’re probably still celebrating from getting MTV to actually credit the director when they play the videos.

So in the end, how did the MTV/Twitter experiment work out? It started slow and pathetic but actually accelerated to something downright appropriate for the network. Celebrities telling people about their fashionable lives: this is what MTV is all about. Any platform that allows MTV to celebrate and exploit the celebrity lifestyle by giving their viewers brief peeks at low-effort fame and fortune fits their mission statement, and the Twitter+Celebrity combo fits this goal like a glove. Hell, I won’t try and act like I’m above all this: I want to know what Timbaland’s doing, and I think we all secretly do. A brief 140 character message letting me know may just be the best way to scratch this guilty itch. In this sense, MTV is on target for once, combining their philosophy with an appropriate platform.

Of course, MTVs true philosophy is “make money” and I’m thus a bit wary. Like Lil’ Wayne when he promoted his forthcoming album, once corporations realize this is a platform for direct and targeted advertising things are going to get interesting. MTV has dipped its toe and I know the advertising division is cooking up schemes. Make no mistake: ad agencies are watching this Twitter phenomenon closely and they were watching this first large, public corporate Twittering experiment even closer. This is the new face of advertising. Small, subtle, and integrated into your daily life: get used to it. But for right now, let’s just enjoy what we have and focus on the important stuff:

What are you doing?

If you’d like to know when the author is writing a blog post or is in the arcade with SouljaBoy (yuuuaa!), you can follow him here. Once you’ve joined Twitter he recommends Twitterrific (Mac) or Twitteroo (Windows) for maximum Twitter enjoyment.