Interesting post at A Second Opinion, Ross Levinsohn’s blog. At a VelocityInteractive event, he asked 30 attendees what site they could not live without, 
and which sites they couldn’t believe had “made it.” More than half replied Twitter. He then polled 13 teens in the room and asked them if they had every heard of Twitter.
The kids however are a different story. We live in a bubble. They live in reality. So when I asked the 13 girls and boys about Twitter, the answer I got surprised me, and the room full of entrepreneurs. Stunned was an expression I would use to describe the room. Of the 13 kids we asked — do you use Twitter? — not a single hand went up. Then, we asked if they had heard of Twitter — only 1 hand sheepishly went up. Stunned silence.
Among his conclusions is that as media and tech aficionados, we need to temper our enthusiasm with a reality check at times and ”It may mean that Twitter is more for the 30-40 crowd, then the teens and 20-somethings.”
So I followed up with my reality check: My 16-year-old has heard of Twitter but doesn’t use it “because none of my friends are there. Only like, two.”
Thinking of Twitter as more of an adult and corporate brand perfectly dovetail’s with what I spotted on Geek.com – a UK startup will microblog for your brand on Twitter for a fee. So the adults and brand managers may be more into Twitter and perhaps permeate it in no time with company-based tweets.
Hopefully these paid postings will be clearly marked as “Sponsored Tweets” because the kids, of course, will suss such advertising posts out right anyway if companies try to sneak them past as “organic.”
That is, if those 13-year-olds ever decide to sign up in the first place.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I am with Ross and the 13 year olds… I don’t get it. Now I should say I do think it could have a cool use (like Yammer). I would love for someone to show me a great use of Twitter so I can be sold or convinced it has value.
Question: Isn’t it the kids who get into things first and then the adults follow.. Facebook and MySpace?
I don’t know if I agree with your stance that the posts should be marked a “sponsored”. What is the difference between an outsourced company rep and an internal company rep tweeting on behalf of the company. It’s all spin and PR if it’s behalf of a corporate entity. What difference does it make who’s doing the actual typing?
Just a thought.
Agreed, no difference between internal and external rep; I would just look askance if it ever came to folks tweeting on behalf of a company under their own personal Twitter identities without disclosure.
Interesting. There is definitely a split when it comes to who has and who hasn’t heard of twitter. As with all social tools, if your friends aren’t there, there’s no point in using it. I’m signed up to loads of networks, but only really use 2, because that’s where my friends are.
As far as tweens using twitter… doesn’t surprise me. Currently, the majority of people I see on twitter are bloggers and techies and the SEO/blogger types who try to make money on those people. There are some celebrities, and that’s all very interesting.
As far as brands and tweeting, I setup a brand on twitter, and set it going. It was the company I worked for, and we were using it as a brand communication tool for prospects. The overwhelming response was positive in that it was different, innovative and allowed for a conversation. To be honest, setting up a company to tweet for you would be VERY hard after the experiences we had. We built up a following quite quickly, and have learned a whole lot about marketing via twitter. It’s all about relationship, and it is possible to setup a client/customer/brand relationship if you’re cleve.
When I think of what has made the Internet a successful, widespread medium, the first thing that comes to mind is its ability to remove barriers to publishing for the masses. This, of course hasn’t happened all at once. There were login issues, HTML issues, security issues, bandwidth issues, privacy issues etc. But what Twitter represents is the closest thing I’ve seen yet to tapping into our collective online id.
For those who don’t “get it” (and I’ve been sought out by more than a couple dozen people at this point to help explain Twitter to them) I always tell them to make sure to check out search.twitter.com. That’s an amazing resource. I have used it to connect with people who think certain things suck, certain other things are awesome, to find potential freelance clients, and I even pulled the RSS feeds from two terms #inaug09 and #dctrip09 on there, sent them through Yahoo! Pipes to make my own Inauguration keepsakes in the form of inaug09.com and dctrip09.com.
Also, it’s worth noting that many people on this planet use a mobile phone as their whose primary Internet connection, and for them, a service like Twitter (and the hundreds of tools built off the API) are opening up entire new worlds to them.
It’s probably too early tell what direction this will go in, but for those who give it a chance, I have yet to see someone stop using it. Time will tell.