Yet another post on Twitter: Fad v/s Revolution

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Jul 23, 2009 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

You don’t need to look far to find critics of Twitter. There’s as many opponents of the service as there are proponents. The former argue that Twitter is just a ‘fad’. An April 2009 report by Nielsen online says that Twitter has a retention rate of less than 40%, which means more than 60% of the users who sign up and try the service do not become regular users of it. So it may be. But the debate on whether Twitter is a ‘Revolution’ or not will last for some more time.

Let’s change tracks and look at something that was a revolution, Napster, which I doubt I need to give you the history of. Napster brought a revolution in the music industry, changing forever the way people acquired and consumed music. While Napster (in its original form) may now be defunct, the spirit behind is still alive, in the various copycat software that followed it, in the technology that was – in part – inspired by it (Bittorrent) , but most importantly in the attitude and behaviour of the people today. A report by Morgan Stanley’s, now hotshot, teen intern says teens are “very reluctant” to pay for music and spend more time streaming it off websites. But the more important change was in the way we acquire music. Music purchased these days is now accessible everywhere on and on each of the multiple devices a user owns. Unlike in the past where a buyer would pay full price for a crappy album with one acceptable track, he can now choose to purchase just that one track and he now has a playlist full of hits. iTunes is the biggest music store in the world today, having beat all other brick and mortar music stores, distributing DRM free music in a similar manner to what Napster did; digitally.

The point I’m desperately trying to make is it doesn’t matter if Twitter, or for that matter any of the other popular Social Networking Sites, die out in a few years. The web has seen its social meter rise through the years – first with forums, then reviews, ratings, wiki, social websites etc – and will certainly continue on that trend. The people (and businesses) that are social today, will continue to be social then. Brands that did not directly engage their consumers till yesterday, are doing so today and will do so tomorrow. Companies that didn’t see social websites as a source of revenue/lead generation till yesterday, are doing so today and will do so tomorrow. Researchers who did not see the social interaction as a source of first hand knowledge till yesterday, are doing so today and will do so tomorrow. The one to one and one to many channels of communication that we’ll now be used will become an important element of an individual/businesses’ communication strategy.

All the activities I mentioned above will continue even in the absence of Twitter, albeit on a newer and more evolved platform. After all, Facebook and Twitter are also evolutionary products of others (and themselves) before them. So maybe it’s okay if Twitter isn’t a revolution because it’s evolution into the product it is today has brought to center the importance of the Social element of the web which will persist when/if Twitter is superseded by something newer.

Image Credit : Tegan

Tags: evolution, facebook, revolution, social networks, twitter
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A former teen’s take on Teens and Twitter

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Jul 13, 2009 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

A report by Matthew Robson – Morgan Stanley’s 15 year old intern – has got a lot of people paying attention as it presents “inside”  information on trends, some of which has turned conventional belief on its head. One part of it says teens aren’t using Twitter because they believe no one is reading their tweets. 16 year old Daniel Brusilovsky over at TechCrunch one ups Robson’s post and says teens are also afraid that Twitter isn’t ‘safe’ (when compared to Facebook) and that texting is expensive. Pfft, what about the public MySpace profile which were and still are quite the rage among teens.

A comment on TechCrunch’s post by James Stern reasons teens avoiding Twitter as “teens don’t care about news, they want to talk to friends and see and comment on their pictures, and Myspace and facebook are better for that.”

James has got it spot on. while it’s true that Twitter is more what you make of it, it is most definitely less of a Social Network than it is a micro-blogging /link sharing / information sharing platform.

For a lot of the first time users, the update box is seen as something to update their ‘status’ – a mindset users carry over from Facebook , which we know teens enjoy and love. Ironically the update box on Facebook has moved away from only status to allow sharing and distribution online – a la Twitter.

But the reason Twitter does well with teens is because they don’t care about networking – the act of creating/extending a network – as much as they do in their existing network itself. They would rather talk/share with their existing network rather than with unknown or “random” people on the internet.

Your average teen doesn’t care about real time search or news. In fact, the way Twitter has been pushed into the mainstream could be one of the factors pushing teens away from Twitter. Simply put, the utility that the mature users of Twitter have derived from it does not appeal to the teen segment.

That being said, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing that the adoption of Twitter among teens is low. Not everything new and exciting needs to be approved by that segment. Maybe it’s okay if Twitter isn’t as “hip” as it is resourceful.