Why Adults Have Fed Twitter’s Growth

Twitter is just another distraction. It’s another example of technology giving people the idea that in some way they are important and what they say is to be regarded as something interesting. The truth: Tweets are 99% pointless babble and the people who tweet are ego-centric and obviously not focused on what they do but only on people knowing what they do. It’s as if everyone has only one desire – to be famous. No more 15 minutes, it’s now closer to 2 seconds of fame on CNN or some other cable tv news program that reads tweets as if they were vital to the story. Overblown and out of touch with what matters, Twitter will not survive and be looked back on as just another fad like the macarena. The same goes for Facebook.
The whole notion that social networking sites or media help us get the information we need at the right time to be more productive is a misnomer. It should really be called social pointless distraction which allows people on Facebook to be hounded by friends we long forgot about and didn’t want to hear from anyway. Does anyone really want to hear from someone they haven’t seen in 25 years or know that a friend of theirs is exhausted from a long day at work (their job being some blogger) and now they need to put their fat cankles up and relax with a three buck chuck? No wonder the economy is in the crapper. 70 percent of the economy is consumption. The decline and fall of this country is happening rapidly but people are too busy tweeting and playing mafia wars to notice.

Twitter was actively used to record cricket game by some in our group (//sites.google.com/site/engieneersciences) as the games are fast, need split second sharing of scores. It’s just great to hear the scores when they happen

Wow, after I finally figured out how to on my computer I headed over to Twitter. The site is simple to use even a dummy can do it.

Maybe it’s partly do to the fact that ‘young people’ cannot communicate without using “like” for every other word! Run out of space real fast.

Harvard Business Blog: “Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets. 90% of tweets are generated by 10% users.”

//blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html

The gender bias part of the findings are less interesting and more suspect but the more relevant and true point of the blog story is that most people are just retweeting other tweets or info found else where/other media sources:

“In other words, the pattern of contributions on Twitter is more concentrated among the few top users than is the case on Wikipedia, even though Wikipedia is clearly not a communications tool. This implies that Twitter’s resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.”

Twitter can be very useful for a small group or business to communicate quickly amonst each other…i think for a vast majority of users it’s a curiosity and the latest time waster/water cooler.

Some of the new eBay alternative sites integrate with Twitter. Online sellers use it to promote their products and connect with buyers.

I’m a 28 year old early adopter to twitter. I’m not egocentric, I’m not “less tech savvy” nor am I new to social networking – I started using Friendster years ago, then moved over to myspace, and now use Facebook and Twitter together. I use twitter because I like it. I like knowing what my friends are up to, I like keeping up with the day to day lives of the bloggers i follow, and if something happens to me and I feel the need to share it, I like being able to share it. Sometimes, my closest friends don’t need me to call them with every little thing. But if they care to know, they can easily find out through Twitter.

What it all comes down to is that twitter is a great tool, and it’s founders should be proud of what they created. You can use it, or you don’t have to. But there’s no need to bash it. Just because you don’t understand it or have a need for it doesn’t make it the reason why the “economy is in the crapper”, or just for “ego-centrics”, or the “corduroy pants of the internet.”

All questions to this growth can be answered very simply..Twitter is very easy

I don’t know what percentage of adults use Twitter primarily for business, as I do. That’s an angle for a story.

I must counter to the comments about Twitter being inane and a way to get 15 minutes of fame, that the quality of the stream is dictated by whom you choose to follow.

Stocktwits is an excellent Twitter-based community and I follow several tweeps there. Yes, they talk about trading and particular stocks but they also talk about what’s going on in the world because that’s what moves the markets.

I get lots of breaking news (not just economic news) from business people using Twitter.

In sum, Twitter is for each user what they make of it. As my mother always warned me, “watch the company you keep.”

The assumption that Twitter was for adults that did not have a favorite social networking site already is, in my mind, wrong.

It is a nuanced, difficult to use tool and unless someone was already on Facebook or something like that, they would not be a newbie and jump on Twitter. @replies alone are difficult to comprehend for the first time user.

Twitter is claiming 17mm subs. I have read there is a 70% drop off for first time users. So are you telling me that all this talk about Twitter is for 5mm subs ? Or half the audience of a prime time show ?

People who write these articles should be held accountable because I promise you they will be the same one’s who were writing about how Second Life was going to take over the world as well.

Twitter is a very small tactic of status updates. If you think for one second, people are going to migrate their lives there, you should get out of the game.

Hear yourself in 5 years, “Remember Twitter?”

Twitter – is working because of the time it takes to use it. I know that the last thing I want is another 3 page email telling me that we have a client who needs help.

Twitter’s success is driven because adults have been given a tool to use to communicate without tons of formality or having to come up with tons of content. With little work you can find other adults who have the same passions that you have, and join in the conversation with them.

Justin Brackett

//www.socialvillage.net

@justinthesouth

Social networking is a part of a larger phenomenon of the line blurring and dissolving between personal and professional lives. The generation gap is most noticeable with SR’s comment which runs very similar to what my friends and I have been debating. We are late baby-boomers and early gen X’ers. Even we notice how different younger generations use technology than us. They are constantly multi-tasking between various communication devices and live conversation. Facebooking and texting while at work is the norm for them. Although it seems to annoy those who are older. Personal ties have become more prominent as the emloyer/employee relationship has weakened over the last 2 generations.