Are you too Twitter-obsessed in your social media approach?
Twitter’s role as a conduit for the Zeitgeist is unrivaled, and it has almost single-handedly ushered in the era of real-time search, and social CRM. But, it’s the online equivalent of HBO – important more because of who uses it and the media’s infatuation with it, rather than the actual size and impact of its audience.
Don’t get me wrong. I advocate participating in Twitter, and I’ve certainly grown my own audience via that channel, and it should be part of almost every company or business professional’s social media tool kit. (great post here on Social Media Examiner on how to methodically grow a Twitter following)
But, Twitter alone does not constitute social media, and you’d think it does given all the disproportionate attention being paid to it at conferences and trade publications. I presented a half-day workshop at the Email Evolution Conference on social media strategy (slides here) recently with DJ Waldow and Mike Corak, and the significant majority of the questions from the audience were about Twitter. That got me thinking that perhaps social media types aren’t fully recognizing Twitter’s limitations?
So, fully expecting each of you to tell me I’m wrong in the comments, here are 7 reasons why Twitter is not the Valhalla of social media:
1. Growth Is Slowing
The true size of the Twitter audience is a bit tricky to pin down because 55% of its users do so via third party and mobile applications. But, new data from Compete.com shows a clear stagnation in Twitter’s runaway growth.
According to these numbers, the audience using Twitter actually declined from August to December, 2009 (during the same period, Facebook went from 250 million to 350 million members).
2. Young People Don’t Use It
Today’s marketing coordinator is tomorrow’s CMO, and younger Americans don’t embrace Twitter. A new Pew Research study shows only 8% of U.S. teens using Twitter, compared to 66% engaged in texting. Do young people not appreciate the many to many nature of Twitter, preferring the 1:1 paradigm of text messaging?
Regardless of the reason, as the current teen population ages, it threatens Twitter’s preeminence unless adoption rates soar.
3. New Features Aren’t Being Used
Last Fall, Twitter rolled out the option for users to “tag” their location onto Tweets, to add geographical context. In true Twitter fashion, it wasn’t “rolled out” per se, it just appeared as part of the API that third parties access. Since then, .023% of all Tweets include location data, according to Sysomos. Not an overwhelming participation rate. (Further, there have been some reports of issues with accuracy in the geo-location feature)
Twitter lists, while useful for categorizing people to follow, haven’t really taken off either. Nor has the new, integrated retweet capability. With each new release of features being met with tepid response, Twitter users are making the statement that they like Twitter just the way it is. That’s great for keeping the existing user base satisfied, but further impedes growth potential.
4. Facebook Sharpening the Knife
You may remember that Twitter refused Facebook’s $500 million buyout offer last September. So as expected, Facebook just added Twitter-style features and functions to its service, to evaporate Twitter’s competitive angle.
Updating Facebook from third parties like Tweetdeck? Check. Tagging people with @ within status updates? Check. Posting to Twitter directly from Facebook? Check. Stripped down interface option, with status updates at the core? Check (Facebook Lite). Retweet-style sharing tools? Check.
Functionally, everything Twitter does, Facebook does just as well, with the exception of mobile usage. Because Facebook has so much more overall functionality than Twitter, the mobile experience is a bit more clunky than Twitter. However, it’s important to recognize that 3 times more people use Facebook from a smart phone every month than use Twitter at all.
5. The Better You Are at Twitter, The Worse You Are at Twitter
Being a new user on Twitter is as lonely as Michael Boublé at a Green Day concert. What’s Happening? it asks, followed by a box and a blinking cursor. Twitter success requires an understanding of the unique rhythms and cadences of the community, and a give first, get later mentality that is a bit counterintuitive at first. The site is exceptionally poor at welcoming and training new users, which may result in its high churn rate.
But a bigger problem with Twitter is that like CB Radio, it doesn’t scale well. If you have a few hundred followers, you can semi-coherently keep them straight, and watch what they are doing via your public stream. But, once you get into the many thousands of followers, that public stream is a cacophony at best. Twitter lists can help in this regard, but many Twitter power users lament that the way they use the service is forced to change significantly as their own Twitter connectivity increases.
Much less time is spent in the public stream, where discoveries occur, and much more time is spent answering replies, and monitoring relevant topics via Twitter search.
When you’re most popular users are the ones that have the hardest time using your service to its full advantage, you have some issues to consider. However, Twitter’s announcement this week at SXSW that they are adding @anywhere – essentially Twitter’s answer to Facebook Connect – should make the follow/following process easier and more contextual.
6. FourSquare and Gowalla go Back to the Future
The new location-based darlings FourSquare and Gowalla are stealing a lot of the place-based intimacy that originally propelled Twitter. The “original” Twitter contained a substantially larger percentage of tweets about the author and what he or she was doing in their own life at that moment. That type of status update has been migrating, first to Facebook , and now to the location services.
Because you actually know the people you are connected with in most cases, FourSquare and Gowalla feel a lot more like the original Twitter, with a sense of engagement that today’s Twitter can’t deliver.
7. Measurement Lacking
Other than retweets and clicks – data that inexplicably is only available from third parties – Twitter provides no statistics to its users other than followers/following. Meanwhile, Facebook has been busy adding layers to its Insights platform, which provides a nuanced dataset enabling business users to test, optimize, and evaluate the efficacy of their time spent on Facebook.
The lack of integrated metrics on Twitter may not be a big deal for personal users, but for corporations looking to embed Twitter into an integrated social CRM approach, it’s a gaping hole that is currently being patched by inefficient, home grown workarounds.
I love Twitter. It enriches my life every day. I hope it sticks around for a long, long time. But, figuring out what you want to do on Twitter is not your “social media strategy” – it’s just a short-term, tactical plan for a platform that survives despite its shortcomings.
(Post originally written for Social Media Examiner – modified today for this version).
Trying to keep up with social networking upturns, downturns, and innovations is like trying to dig a tunnel from the Arctic North to Shanghai, China. I'm not even going to try. I mean content should be king, not one-liners on the likes of Twitter.
ann has a point – it's all about the content. I think twitter is more of a heavily curated rss reader/feeder rather than a portal, and I suspect that presenting twitter to new users as more of a friendly way to use rss that as a way to push conversation with strangers would help quite a bit.
IMO, following friends and conversing with them makes sense, but using twitter as a portal to updates from entertainment, news sources, and blogs from a single source via a mobile device is what keeps me engaged with the service
ann has a point – it's all about the content. I think twitter is more of a heavily curated rss reader/feeder rather than a portal, and I suspect that presenting twitter to new users as more of a friendly way to use rss that as a way to push conversation with strangers would help quite a bit.
IMO, following friends and conversing with them makes sense, but using twitter as a portal to updates from entertainment, news sources, and blogs from a single source via a mobile device is what keeps me engaged with the service
RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
Great post with solid facts. RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
RT @PRVille: Great post with solid facts. RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84 via @jaybaer #socialmedia
RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/d9S3JJ #in /via @MikeLizun
Why twitter is great…to a point RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/d9S3JJ
Why twitter is great…to a point RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/d9S3JJ
Why twitter is great…to a point RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/d9S3JJ
RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket – http://bit.ly/d9S3JJ (via @jaybaer)
7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket – http://bit.ly/d9S3JJ (via @jaybaer)
7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket – http://bit.ly/d9S3JJ (via @jaybaer)
7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket: http://bit.ly/cZcxzO – by @jaybaer
Excellence from @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/d9S3JJ
RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
"Being a new user on Twitter is as lonely as Michael Boublé at a Green Day concert" (via @JayBaer): http://bit.ly/9M6c84
RT @HowellMarketing: RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/d9S3JJ #in /via @MikeLizun
RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
Seems to me you wouldn't put all your eggs into any one basket, Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare or any of them. The dynamic is always changing, something new is always on the horizon, people join and abandon individual apps as quickly as a newly discovered bar or restaurant. The point is to understand social media as part of an overall marketing strategy, understand individual apps, and be nimble and adaptable.
Excellent analysis, Jay. I particularly agree with #2 and #5 (my 13 year old cousin thinks Twitter is “weird”). Reminds me in ways of Russia's demographic decline: rising death rates coupled with fewer births.
Prescribed uses of Twitter aren't very easy for newcomers to comprehend, hence the oft heard “I don't get it” retorts…
7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/b9w6Xe
7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/b9w6Xe
Intéressant > 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/8Zbgsf (Convince and Convert)
As per usual, Jay raises many valid points and questions; but where to step off the social media merry-go-round? How many more platforms or tools must one try to digest/use regularly? Content is king, agreed. Twitter provides ready access to said content. Despite its shortcomings (and there are many), Twitter is easy to use, and from a personal view it seems to hold fewer privacy risks than Facebook and location-based apps. No, it's not the end-all-be-all with respect to a social media strategy, but it is an essential tool. As for youth and the percentage of young Americans on Twitter, people age, so give them time. And whereas Facebook is the site du jour for posting personal pics and other gobbledy-gook, Twitter is, in my opinion, a better mobile tool for getting/giving information. I agree with Larrythewineguy: “The point is to understand social media as part of an overall marketing strategy, understand individual apps, and be nimble and adaptable.”
@jaybaer 7 reasons not to put all your eggs in the Twitter basket http://ow.ly/1mXOn
I think the death of twitter is greatly exaggerated for a number of reasons.
1. It allows a sniper vs. shotgun approach to marketing. People like me – NOT teens, educated, professional – are the ones I follow on twitter & vice-versa. Those are the people I am interested in. Teens don't pay for statistical consulting services.
2. Facebook is annoying as $#@! to people like me. I don't want to play Mafia Wars, buy a cartoon pig or anything else. It is easier to choose your twitter stream and focus it.
3. I don't use the location apps because I don't always want people to know where I am. No nefarious reason. Sometimes I am meeting with clients on confidential work.
4. I have three daughters, aged 11 – 27. Three of them use twitter (the 24-year-old doesn't). They don't use it near as much as texting, which is great with me. I love my daughters but I really am not looking for a 23-year-old friend.
5. The one-liners I read daily are references to websites, conferences, fixes for technical problems.
7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/cR6eWs
7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket: Are you too Twitter-obsessed in your social media approa… http://bit.ly/cR6eWs
RT @jaybaer 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/aE09rz #SMM
RT @jaybaer 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/aE09rz #SMM
7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/cR6eWs #ConvinceandConvert
RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket http://bit.ly/d9S3JJ
RT @journalistics: RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
If you've seen the TT, u know young ppl tweet. RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
If you've seen the TT, u know young ppl tweet. RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84
RT @jaybaer 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84 <–I like this, very Interesting & great points.
RT @jaybaer 7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket. http://bit.ly/9M6c84 <–I like this, very Interesting & great points.
Agreed! RT @dorizinn: If you've seen the TT, u know young ppl tweet. RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons … http://bit.ly/9M6c84
Agreed! RT @dorizinn: If you've seen the TT, u know young ppl tweet. RT @jaybaer: 7 Reasons … http://bit.ly/9M6c84
7 Reasons Not to Put All Your Eggs in the Twitter Basket | http://bit.ly/aSAc4m