Contributor: Stephen M. Fells
Are you one of the few people that doesn’t have a Twitter account? Are you one of the minority who have used Twitter but ‘just don’t get it’? The numbers are in and the phenomenon that is Twitter ain’t doing so well.
Anyone that ‘tweet’s’ seems to get media coverage. Celebrities, politicians, major news outlets, even complete nobody’s who get the first recorded ‘twinjury’ (or injury while using twitter) are in the news.
According to a recent Harvard Business School post the most damning statistic is that the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. Add that 60% of new Twitter users quit after a month and it would seem you are not one of the few and are certainly not in the minority.
Even Twitter founder, Evan Williams, admits that twitter needs work as detailed in the following video clip.
Does that mean it’s a fad? I think not, it’s just not as publically accepted as everyone will have you believe. Twitter is definitely here to stay but I don’t suspect it will continue in its current form.
As a marketing platform it is second to none, essentially a free alternative, dare I say replacement, to email with ‘followers’ being the Twitter equivalent of ‘opt ins’. Social ‘experts’ will warn against this type of usage and will promote building relationships over soap boxes. Twitter spam (no doubt soon to be coined ‘twam’ by some twanker in the ever more ridiculous craze of adding a ‘tw’ before almost every word…) is on the increase and Twitter themselves are cracking down. Let’s hope they do a better job than the companies fighting email spam.
