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Real Men Don’t Twitter

Topics: Technology | 2 CommentsBy admin | June 10, 2009

Is Twitter a vast nation of sheep led by a handful of loud-mouth marketers and celebrities?

Take any large group of people, say, a cocktail party. Inevitably, there will be one or two loudmouths that draw a circle of listeners, while most people wander and mingle, maybe forming small, more civil two-way conversations. In my view, this remains Twitter’s biggest obstacle to broader adoption: it’s a huge herd of sheep. 80 Percent Of Accounts Have Fewer Than 10 Followers, or as this Harvard Business blog puts it, Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets. The article also points out that Twitter reverses the usual social network pattern in which men mostly follow women they don’t know, and women follow women they do know. Additionally, since Twitter is mostly a one-way broadcast medium, it draws a tremendous number of multilevel marketing and tech guru types who spam the system. I’ve been saying for a while that Twitter would max out somewhere around the number of Blackberry users, who number around 21 million users as of May 2009. These numbers seem to indicate Twitter is at least leveling off, and guess what? It’s just under 20 million users. I chose this number a little arbitrarily based on the idea that Twitter is such a perfect fit for mobile device users. I personally have used Twitter as an MLM tool, as mentioned above, but otherwise would only find it useful if I worked with a large, mobile work force of some kind. For personal use, it just has little appeal. Don’t listen to me though, Twitter to your heart’s content. In fact, here are 10 tools to help you do it better. Do you use Twitter? I’d love to hear about how and why.

This was the number two trending topic when I logged in to Twitter this morning:

Read Comments

  1. Posted by TeacherPatti on 06.10.09 4:15 pm

    I have more than 10 followers (I think I have 70some, most of whom are known to me personally) and I’m still ambivalent about Twitter. Here’s the thing…I log on and you see
    @soandso ha ha you are so funny! Right on! What a great statement!
    @suchandsuch That sounds like a plan! Thanks!
    @whoisitywhatisity Oh no you dinnit! That is so perverted!

    In other words, you are eavesdropping on conversations BUT YOU ARE ONLY HEARING HALF OF THE CONVERSATION! (Unless you follow both parties, which isn’t often). It’s weird.

    I do like it for when I blast out–Hey! Going drinking! Who’s with me?? But otherwise, I prefer FB b/c at least I can feel like I’m *having* a conversation instead of merely reading half of one.

  2. Posted by jeannie beanie on 06.11.09 8:02 am

    tweet tweet… makes me twitter. it has it’s uses. Mostly..I think being only able to have.. like wha? 170 words to say, speaks (not a pun) to the lack of desire to communicate fully in a conversation. Make it easy and lacking in substance. Tho’ little can say alot. Staccato words and phrases quipped down to bare essentials hoping to exchange some thought hallowed out by brevity.
    This is what happens when people consider their lives tooooo busy.
    I get it. I do it.
    I joined the crowd of busy people with only time to spit out a few words to
    keep others informed and hanging on for more later… maybe.
    tweet tweet