A former teen’s take on Teens and Twitter
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.
Tags: social network, teens, twitterRead More
What is your TwitPurpose?
You don’t have to look around a lot to find a number of articles on how to get a high number of followers. Some tell you to adopt a borderline spammy approach of following hundreds of users a day, others advise tweeting a lot so the followers come to you instead of the other way around. But before all that how many of us stop and think of what we are trying to gain by getting a high follower count; is it even important to you as an individual? This gives rise to the important question of ‘What is your TwitPurpose ?’ It’s only after answering that question will you be able to decide as to what following-follower strategy you will adopt.
One view is to look to Twitter to build Value. Value may be keeping abreast of the latest news (or gossip), gaining knowledge or even as a source of humour. The quality of tweets from the people you choose to follow is of greater importance. In this case it comes down to who you follow.
The other view is to extend your Reach with twitter. To be able to deliver your content, message or products to a wide audience is an exciting proposition to many. The quality of people doesn’t matter here as the emphasis is on quantity; how many you follow.
Technically speaking it is possible to have both Value and Reach together as the former could be in following a restricted set of people with the latter reflecting in your follower count. But that is not the case for most users as follower/following count tend to be more close than further away. So users are then expected to make a decision on what they wish to achieve from their efforts on Twitter. The decision, quite simply, could boil down to Quantity v/s Quality. Neither choice is wrong, it’s just a derivant of your Twitpurpose
Tags: social network, twitterRead More
Connect with me
Subscribe via RSS