4 ms·

I agree with this completely. I have yet to even meet someone that uses twitter. I have always seen twitter as a valleywood product. Seems to me like the peo

I agree with this completely. I have yet to even meet someone that uses twitter. I have always seen twitter as a valleywood product. Seems to me like the people that use it, use it because they think they are suppose to.

chipotle_coyote 14y ago
Well, let's see. Twitter has 500M registered accounts (according to Wikipedia) and a churn rate of about ~80% as of 2010[1], a (very) ballpark estimate of active users is 100M. While you personally may not have met anyone who uses it, I know a lot of people who do and they are certainly not all in "Valleywood." And I'm pretty sure no active user is using it "because they think they are supposed to"; there's no evidence that suggests people who aren't really that interested in Twitter keep coming back to use it out of a mysterious sense of obligation. [1]: http://liesdamnedliesstatistics.com/2010/01/80-twitter-accounts-inactive-but-core-users-more-committed.html http://liesdamnedliesstatistics.com/2010/01/80-twitter-accou...
- adamc 14y ago
  What does it mean to be an "active" user? If I use it once a month, or even once a week while following a search, am I "active"? I have a twitter account. I just about never "tweet", but occasionally look for information there. Mostly I ignore it. I don't know how the churn is measured, but I know a lot of people who fit into that category -- they use it, but not heavily. If something else replaced it I would barely notice. Whereas, in my experience, many Facebook users seem much more heavily committed to Facebook, since it has updates of friends and family. (I don't use Facebook at all, so this is just an observation -- would love to see more data contrasting the two services.)
mcantelon 14y ago
>I have yet to even meet someone that uses twitter. Odd. Twitter has been a great intelligence tool for me (I don't live in the valley, but I'm definitely tech-centric so not representative of the general population). I've heard of interesting projects and tools with it, I virtually "met" someone who I ended up collaborating on a successful project with, I got tipped off about an amazing travel package through an amateur agency with it, I got notified of a coding contest with it that won me registration to Google I/O, etc. etc. It changed my perspective and life, honestly. My Twitter use has, however, dropped off sinced my favourite web-based Twitter tool went offline. Twitter's official web client simply doesn't do what's needed and I don't like using non-web clients. I am now working on a personal Twitter client when I find time. Once that's done I'll return.
rahoulb 14y ago
I have a few twitter accounts - most of which are tech based and rapidly becoming uninteresting to me. But my football (soccer) account - in which I live-tweet updates during the game has thousands of followers and is a really interesting mix of people. (Also the username matches the club name as the club was late to Twitter - so I think I pick up followers who are searching for the official account). I've not done any formal analysis but I always take a quick look at people when I follow back and I read the feed most days, even when there isn't a match. And I would say that about 70 or 80% of followers don't tweet regularly and follow lots of "famous" names without many followers themselves (this percentage has increased a lot in the last 18 months). Of those that do tweet, only about 20% are tech-savvy and there are several "cliques" - probably groups of friends who know each other in real life - who tweet amongst themselves a lot. These groups tend to have about 5 or 10 regular members. This makes up the vast majority of the feed. And most of the rest of the tweets I see are publicists of various types; journalists, SEOs, bloggers and the footballers themselves. EDIT: corrected some bad grammar.

chipotle_coyote 14y ago

Well, let's see. Twitter has 500M registered accounts (according to Wikipedia) and a churn rate of about ~80% as of 2010[1], a (very) ballpark estimate of active users is 100M. While you personally may not have met anyone who uses it, I know a lot of people who do and they are certainly not all in "Valleywood." And I'm pretty sure no active user is using it "because they think they are supposed to"; there's no evidence that suggests people who aren't really that interested in Twitter keep coming back to use it out of a mysterious sense of obligation. [1]: http://liesdamnedliesstatistics.com/2010/01/80-twitter-accounts-inactive-but-core-users-more-committed.html http://liesdamnedliesstatistics.com/2010/01/80-twitter-accou...

adamc 14y ago
What does it mean to be an "active" user? If I use it once a month, or even once a week while following a search, am I "active"? I have a twitter account. I just about never "tweet", but occasionally look for information there. Mostly I ignore it. I don't know how the churn is measured, but I know a lot of people who fit into that category -- they use it, but not heavily. If something else replaced it I would barely notice. Whereas, in my experience, many Facebook users seem much more heavily committed to Facebook, since it has updates of friends and family. (I don't use Facebook at all, so this is just an observation -- would love to see more data contrasting the two services.)

mcantelon 14y ago

>I have yet to even meet someone that uses twitter. Odd. Twitter has been a great intelligence tool for me (I don't live in the valley, but I'm definitely tech-centric so not representative of the general population). I've heard of interesting projects and tools with it, I virtually "met" someone who I ended up collaborating on a successful project with, I got tipped off about an amazing travel package through an amateur agency with it, I got notified of a coding contest with it that won me registration to Google I/O, etc. etc. It changed my perspective and life, honestly. My Twitter use has, however, dropped off sinced my favourite web-based Twitter tool went offline. Twitter's official web client simply doesn't do what's needed and I don't like using non-web clients. I am now working on a personal Twitter client when I find time. Once that's done I'll return.

rahoulb 14y ago

I have a few twitter accounts - most of which are tech based and rapidly becoming uninteresting to me. But my football (soccer) account - in which I live-tweet updates during the game has thousands of followers and is a really interesting mix of people. (Also the username matches the club name as the club was late to Twitter - so I think I pick up followers who are searching for the official account). I've not done any formal analysis but I always take a quick look at people when I follow back and I read the feed most days, even when there isn't a match. And I would say that about 70 or 80% of followers don't tweet regularly and follow lots of "famous" names without many followers themselves (this percentage has increased a lot in the last 18 months). Of those that do tweet, only about 20% are tech-savvy and there are several "cliques" - probably groups of friends who know each other in real life - who tweet amongst themselves a lot. These groups tend to have about 5 or 10 regular members. This makes up the vast majority of the feed. And most of the rest of the tweets I see are publicists of various types; journalists, SEOs, bloggers and the footballers themselves. EDIT: corrected some bad grammar.