Twitter Users “Tweet,” and Are Not
Considered Twits
Twitter for Dummies?
Wikipedia,
the online encyclopedia, defines Twitter as “an online
social
networking and microblogging
service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of
up to 140 characters,
informally known as 'tweets.'” Social networking is done in an
online site or community that has as its purpose social interaction.
Microblogging is a form of blogging where the individual blog is
shorter than normal, limited to a few sentences or less.
Twitter was created in 2006 by John
Dorsey, and has grown to over 200 million users that post over 200
million tweets per day and initiate 1.6 billion searches (queries).
Twitter has been referred to the short message service (SMS) of the
internet.
Pear Analytics (www.pearanalytics.com)
of San Antonio analyzed 2000 random tweets and determined that 40% of
tweets were pointless babble, 38% were conversational, 9% had
pass-along value (whatever that is), 6% were self-promotional (you
really don't want to read these, either), 4% were spam
(self-promotional and spam seem the same to me) and 4% were actually
useful, albeit disjointed and disorganized and sometimes totally
inaccurate news. Danah Boyd (www.danah.org) and other fans of
Twitter have reclassified the pointless babble as social grooming or
peripheral awareness.
Social grooming is a form of
relationship building, accomplished through bonding and reinforcing
social structures, not unlike grooming in chimpanzees. The
comparison seems to uphold the pointless babble angle, except for the
fact that people of generation Y and, to a lesser extent, generation
X, have few, if any, face-to-face social skills and bonding. These
generations have reserved their social grooming for the online
experience. Read more at
(http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/08/16/twitter_pointle.html)
Danah Boyd defines peripheral awareness
as the need to know minute details of what your friends are doing,
feeling, and thinking. Boyd initially studied computer science at
Brown University, where she wrote an undergraduate thesis on how "3-D
computer systems used cues that were inherently sexist.” Boyd's
doctoral thesis at the University of California Berkley School of
Information Sciences was entitled Taken Out of Context: American
Teen Sociality in Networked Publics. Dr. Boyd is considered by
many to be the foremost authority on how youth use social networking.
Most of Dr. Boyd's work seems to be social anthropology as it
applies to social networking – one might consider her the Jane
Goodall of social networking.
Needless to say, most of my generation
are going to have a lot of trouble relating to and understanding the
work of Dr. Boyd.
A recent article entitled “10 Things
Twitter Won't Tell You,” by Sara Germano, was very critical of
Twitter (Smart Money, September 2011, pgs.78-80.). Active Twitter
users attract an average of 5,000 people who choose to follow their
tweets, according to Twitalyzer (http://twitalyzer.com).
The 90/10 rule seems to be dominant, since 10% of Twitter's users
create 90 percent of Twitter's content. Lady Gaga and President
Obama have 12 million and 9 million followers respectively. Sara
Germano says you are not likely to make any impact by joining
Twitter.
Another downside to Twitter is that any
photos uploaded by your phone contain embedded GPS coordinates, which
make it easy for you to be staked, according to ICanStalkU.com.
Number three on the top ten things wrong with Twitter is that
Twitter-stalkers could be good friends who take issue with your
posts, which may form the basis of disagreements. Couples therapists
are now reporting Twitter and other virtual media as stressors in
relationships. People just don't adhere to the best etiquette when
using social networking, which leads to disagreements.
Many users of Twitter feel they are
helping journalists; in fact, the opposite is closer to the truth.
Social networking and the Internet have virtually destroyed
newspapers and other responsible journalism. The information
provided is often inaccurate and misleading, the result of incomplete
and shoddy research. (Perhaps I should be careful here; I am writing
an article to post in a blog.) Muck Rack (http://muckrack.com/), a
directory of journalists, that points out which are good and which
are bad, was created by Gregory Galant of Sawhorse Media.
Among the true news items reported on
Twitter before the mainstream media were Michael Jackson's death and
the death of Osama bin Laden. But many news service tweets are
erroneous. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was initially reported killed in
tweets by Thomson Reuters. Only 9 of 21 twitter news sites were
considered accurate, according to a Pew Research Center Project for
Excellence in Journalism (http://pewresearch.org/).
Twitter applications (Twitter apps for
the techno savvy) only filter and organize 60% of tweets. Twitter is
aware of this disparity. This lack of a random sample or significant
loss of feed makes the usefulness of Twitter apps, although free,
questionable.
Twitter users claim that Twitter can be
used to predict the stock market. Indiana University claims that
Twitter can be used to predict the Dow Jones Industrial Average with
an 87 percent accuracy. Some market strategists predict stock prices
when the market is down.
Many people may want to get in on the
Twitter Initial Public Offering (IPO) – although Twitter management
insists that the company is not ready to go public. Many investment
advisers feel that a feeding frenzy will occur, driving the initial
price too high; best to wait till the excitement dies down, and the
price lowers to a more reasonable value.
One of the biggest problems in the
Internet is that many people are just not who you think they are.
For over a year now, a friend of mine has been asking me to play
cityville and other games on facebook. When I caught up with my
friend, he argued that his children were using his account and he did
not play any of the games—his children played them.
I know of several confirmed incidents
where people on the Internet were not who they said they were.
Twitter claims to verify tweeting celebrities with a blue “verified”
check mark, although the verification process is not considered an
accurate one by some authors, including Sara Germano. Twitter is not
saying anything specific on how they determine who is legitimate and
who isn't.
Twitter advertising is also a bit
different. Twitter uses hash tags to market their advertisers, who
pay them for the privilege. A hash tag is a number or pound sign (#)
followed by a search term or buzz word. Some of the tweets directed
to users who use the hash tag to search will actually be from Twitter
advertisers.
Twitter will make over $150 million
this year in this type of advertising; facebook will make $4 billion
this year in ad revenue. Perhaps Twitter lags behind facebook on
advertising revenue because of the pointless babble that some feel is
social grooming and peripheral awareness. Maybe someday I'll
understand Twitter enough to tweet – and not feel like a twit.
We come to the end of another missive.
I am still here working for you. If there is anything that I can do
please call me at 410-747-0396 or 443-465-7112, fax me at 7476357,
email me at alfred@giovetti.com,
or contact me on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/alfred.giovetti
or linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/profile/edit?trk=hb_tab_pro_top.