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Jun
The Types of People That Use Twitter
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According to When Did You Join Twitter, I started messing around with the service 419 days ago. In these 419 days, I’ve seen a few trends and have been a little taken aback from the recent jump in popularity. Its membership has been growing exponentially since the start of 2009. I lump most of the people I follow into a few categories:
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Twitter Shitters
These are folks who tweet about everything that they’re doing every moment of the day. I just stopped following three such people because they were driving me up the wall with the inane shit that they were posting. These people say that they’re the “real” users of the service. I think they just have too much time on their hands and an over-inflated sense of their own importance. I liken them to LinkedIn “LIONS”. [READ] They don’t really get what the tool is for.
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Lurkers
There have been a lot of studies coming out this week analyzing Twitter’s users. [READ] One interesting stat is that 40% of Tweeters never tweet again after their first day. Some studies are chalking this up to people who have forgotten their login information but I think they’re actually lurkers – people who like to read the tweets but never respond and never tweet. They’re like eStalkers.
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Marketing Guys
Someone in the last year put the bug in the ear of marketers that Twitter is a great platform for pushing your wares. Pho Citi Noodles (@phociti) in LA is a prime example. This Vietnamese restaurant tweets many times a day trying to get people to come in and eat at their restaurant. I don’t know how effective this kind of strategy is. It actually seems kind of dumb to me.
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SEO Junkies
I think I fall into this category. SEO Junkies are typically bloggers that are looking to increase the exposure of their blog to the masses by using whatever means possible. I have a plugin for my Wordpress blog that automatically tweets for me when I publish a new blog post. I see Twitter as a platform to increase my exposure and I follow a number of people who use Twitter in the same way. I find their tweets useful and informative and to be frank – I’m glad these people don’t post about what they had for lunch.
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Facebook Lite Users
The last category I would put people in are Facebook lite users who see the Twitter platform as a social networking tool. I’ve certainly responded to people who reach out to me via Twitter. I’ve had people in the last week as me for recommendations on moving companies, research methodologies, baby strollers and the like. I don’t mind answering these questions with a short reply or direct message. I think this is what Twitter’s founders were probably envisioning when they created the tool back in 2006.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m still not convinced that Twitter is a mature communications tool – especially when compared to other social networking platforms like LinkedIn or Facebook. It’s an interesting tool though and I’ll continue to play around with it. If I end up roaming into category 1 or 3, someone kick me.
- Bookmark :
- Digg
- del.icio.us
- Stumbleupon
- Redit it
I’d say that’s a pretty accurate summary. I find Twitter a bit too ADD for my tastes, so I probably tend toward #5, while wishing I had enough patience to do #4. Maybe I need to delete a couple of the #1/3s to make my feed less irritating.
WRT #2: Don’t know if you happened to see The Ad Contrarian’s Twitter Quiz yesterday (http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2009/06/twitter-quiz.html) but you’ll not be surprised at the answer to the first question. Some interesting data via a study by Harvard Business Publishing.
Thanks Jake. That’s an interesting study. What that tells me is the majority of people using the service use it to lurk or sign up and don’t ever use it again. I wonder what kind of an impact this information has on stock prices…
I used it for a brief period to try and understand its value. I’ve seen politicians use it and media too and can see some value for them. It’s valuable for them because: (1) people are interested in what their politicians are doing (by the way, the premier actually \tweeted\ his messages, they were not ghost written), and; (2) media like late breaking news. However, for the rest of us I still struggle to see and understand the real value add.
Am I a lurker if I signed up to see what all the hype is about and then abandoned? I remember my log in but just can’t be bothered. Plus, what’s with the random people “following” me. Freaks me out! I’m most certainly not worth following given my total inactivity on the site. I can see it as a marketing tool though. And am intrigued by twitter-emulators for C-suite employee/internal communications.
As someone who joined twitter 795 days ago, I can fairly confidently say I am an early adopter and even was somewhat of an evangelist of twitter to many of the online community who were dubious to start (but quickly jumped on the bandwagon, as the whole world now seems to have also done).
As someone who has “been around” the twitter scene (as well as the general internet community) for quite some time, I feel your categories are a bit skewed and lacking. Particularly #1. This category really needs to be split into 2 separate categories. Firstly those who do post inane and uninteresting things like “doing a poo”, and secondly those who post everyday things about their life but in a way that is creative, funny and interesting, that allows others around the world a glimpse into the life of someone they would never have otherwise known. This to me is the beauty of twitter. Micro-blogging in true form. This is my personal favourite category and hopefully the category my tweets fall under.
As for the other categories, I don’t pay attention to anyone in:
#2: many of these are often bots and porn accounts
#3: I’m not here for you to sell me your product, so thanks but no thanks. I’m completely inundated and surrounded by advertising as it is. How about something not motivated by money for a change?
#4: These people actually rather annoy me – if I follow someone on twitter, I want to read something meaningful/amusing/insightful that they wrote that actually happened to them, not an automatic wordpress/cms engine generated tweet spamming my twitter feed every other day, because if I really wanted to read your blog, I would visit your blog or subscribe to your rss feed. Being spammed is quite annoying. This is something that really irritates me – the way twitter is being seen and used more and more as a “great marketing tool” or to “promote” a site or product or celebrity – basically spamming the twitter feed with inane and barely disguised advertising. To be frank, a twitter feed full of generated links to people’s websites is really quite boring. Maybe I’m a bit of a purist here, but that’s my opinion.
#5: This is quite similar to my ideal category, but it’s only half the story – there needs to be the giving as well as the taking for a tweeter to be an interesting and valuable follow.
Sorry for the rant, but that is the genuine 2 cents from a genuine veteran contributer & user in this “web 2.0″ internet age. I know you are a consulting company, so it is in your best (monetary) interest to utilise twitter to its full marketing purpose, so I suppose my opinions will go largely ignored.
(Btw my name is not my twitter account, as unlike many, it is not really important to me to have a large number of followers.. plus I have no monetary interest involved).
Hey Kaz,
I don’t have a problem with your comments. They’re your perspective. You follow the kinds of people you want to and I follow the kind of people I want to. I don’t see the differentiation between your categories of #1. I find what you had for lunch and what you did in the bathroom equally uninteresting. So, you find posts like mine annoying and I find posts like yours annoying. It just goes to show how different twitter users can be.
I’ve been an early adopter of many other Web 2.0 platforms and have been a part of the online community since the old BBS days. Twitter just didn’t pick up a huge mass of users until the Category #4 people you don’t enjoy started signing up en mass.
Keep on keepin’ it real.
Twitter is very addictive. I like Twitter more than blogging. the messages are short and straight to the point.