74% of Twitter users have 10 tweets or less
mediamemo.allthingsd.com
mediamemo.allthingsd.com
* Tech inclined, but non-industry friends just don't see the value of Twitter. The word pointless is used almost every time.
* Those that try it leave very fast. That's where the 10 tweets per person seems to be about right.
* The engagement just isn't there. I know someone mentioned the whole 90/10 ratio, but that's different here. Imagine if only 74% of Facebook users posted something or updated their profile. That's really really bad.
* I asked a room filled with 30 college seniors who come from good backgrounds / fairly smart / business students etc if they used Twitter. One person tried it and one person uses it for their job, not personally.
I'm not saying Twitter is horrible or Twitter is going to die. I just don't see it being the huge monstrosity of a multi multi billion dollar company a lot of people expect it to be. That's okay. I'd rather see it stick around for those that do value it, rather than die because it tried to become something it just can't be.
IMHO Twitter is a tool for following interesting people who aren't close enough to you to be your friend in something like Facebook. But what makes someone interesting on Twitter? Being a celebrity is not it: Most celebrities aren't famous for generating Twitter-type content. They're famous for acting or sprinting or golf or good looks, none of which translates well to Twitter.
Being an important company is not it, either, unless you enjoy reading press releases or are a serious power user.
The people I follow are hackers, writers, artists, and good linkers. People who are otherwise hard to follow via mass media, but are not close enough to be personal friends. It doesn't surprise me that the audience for that is large but not gargantuan, just as it doesn't surprise me to know that the market for novels is an order of magnitude smaller than the market for sitcoms.
It also doesn't surprise me that the Twitter audience skews older. Isn't catering to kids what the rest of the media is for?
Another overlooked demographic of the twitter userbase is the urban segment. A ton of rappers use the service, hence bringing more fans. Go look at most of the hashtag trends on search.twitter ie- #whyursingle. Almost all of the responses are from an urban/black audience. I think there's some X Factor there, as it could turn twitter into something more mainstream. I don't know.
As far as the urban audience, I think one of things that makes Twitter a little closer to MySpace is that ability to customize your background. I think that might be a part of it, but certainly not all of it.
I follow some restaurants in my city, and it is useful for keeping tabs on specials and other happenings around me, but it's almost entirely useless for personal communication - Facebook does it better with more existing adoption.
I agree though, Twitter has an interesting case for local merchants.
Also Twitter really facilitates adhoc, transient groups of "friends" such as SXSW, ACL, conference attendees or elections via hash tags.
Where "announcements" == advertisements. Yes, that's the apparent and generally agreed (long-term) usefulness of Twitter.
1) I opt-in, and can opt-out
2) I pick exactly who I want to get advertising from
3) The "advertiser" can get feedback on how many people are following them, how many new, how many lost, and potentially adjust.
Personally, I'm pretty happy that I can follow my favorite restaurants and they tell me what today's specials are, or I can follow my neighborhood bar and they tell me when they change a keg. If that's the future of advertising, I'm happy to have it.
When I get a tweet from a place I like about what's on special tonight, I don't have something flashing in my eyes causing epileptic seizures. I also don't have boobs in my face making me look.
They've found a new vehicle in Twitter -- a tap into a new generation of consumers. They've done it well, for their consumers are actually defensive of their advertisements by virtue of the fact that the Ad is served up via new technology. (i.e. Because it's personal it's more legit? welcome?)
They've surely found the sweet spot of technology and their consumers. Genius.
I'd be curious to know the stats on Facebook. I'd guesstimate that only about 20% of my FB friends post on a regular basis. Lots of people are on FB but not terribly engaged.
One other thought-- I was one of those <10 tweets users for a while. You keep building an audience and keep seeing friends following you, eventually you start tweeting (or at least I did). So unlike a lot of abandoned user accounts with other services, I think abandoned Twitter accounts might "wake up" down the road.
I think Twitter has a perceived high barrier to entry. If you don't have any friends on it, why would you tweet to yourself? And if you don't tweet, why would anyone follow you?
It's all about who you follow, IMHO.
"Is it a communications utility a la Facebook or is it a media company?"
IMHO It's neither. It's an asynchronous ecosystem that connect people based on affinity rather than friendship.
Facebook is about friends (and casual games). Twitter is about strangers. Who you might want as friends or at least have some common interest even if only temporarily such as both you looking for SXSW after parties.
http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/files/2010/03/twittering-dis...
200,000 tweets would be roughly 5 tweets every hour since Twitter was created. There is a mass of such spammers in the 1,000 followers range because 1,000 seems to be the order of magnitude that accounts can get to by semi-automated following and unfollowing.
That's how I use it, I don't have anything to say(and would most likely use my blog if I had to post something) but I'm following artists/companies to keep up with their news.
I would guess that I've sent less than 5 tweets since I've been on there. That hasn't kept a bunch of people from following me, although I don't know 90% of my followers and the other 10% are mostly ex-girlfriends and people I knew in high school.
You don't need all your users to be active to have a useful or viable product.
Facebook is an edge case - they have a huge percentage of active users.
"Your friend just took a crap & tweeted about it? Power to you"
"The popularity of twitter is testament to the stupidity of the human race"
I personally never tweet. I only follow popular people to hear what they say, news sites, local businesses, etc. I don't really know why anyone follows me.
Fast-forward now, and they are all gung-ho over facebook. Not sure if Twitter is on the same trajectory but your line of argument("we already have x, why need y?") is very weak going by history.
ALL THE DAMN TIME!
What the HELL Twitter? I'd tweet a LOT more often if I didn't have to keep freaking logging in. GEEZ.