There are times I hate social media. It’s never the tool itself but the ravenous tugging at the cool tool-du-jour’s carcass by the various vultures surrounding it.
Twitter is one such carcass – a fleshy one, but it’s still being picked over nonetheless.
Some awful twaddle is being talked about Twitter, but when I saw this headline in The Guardian this morning I didn’t know whether to hurl or hurl my monitor.
Moldova forces regain control of parliament after ‘Twitter revolution’
Besides the headline, the only mention of Twitter came in the form of this lone sentence.
One analyst called the uprising a “Twitter revolution”.
THAT. IS. IT. (I’d link to it, but they don’t even deserve a nofollow – just search for the title if you must.)
No argument or name supporting the claim – not even a link to the tweet that was obviously the guy’s source as ‘analyst’ (and I’m maybe being kind in that assumption). Still, with daily cries of the death of newspapers, you can’t blame them for squeezing in a little Twitter morsel to try and up those page views.
There may be other reasons that compound your hatred of Twitter besides the incessant hype. All this technical talk can remind you of your own shortcomings and leave you burdened with the thought of learning a new skill set in the vain attempt of jumping on another bandwagon. Not only that, but you’re probably thinking all this social media stuff is for the young ‘uns, which only exacerbates your feelings of technical impotence.
Not so fast meine Damen und Herren.
A Comscore study out yesterday highlights us old fogeys as its key user base. Take a look at this graph:
[…] 18-24 year olds, the traditional social media early adopters, are actually 12 percent less likely than average to visit Twitter (Index of 88). It is the 25-54 year old crowd that is actually driving this trend. More specifically, 45-54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter, making them the highest indexing age group, followed by 25-34 year olds, who are 30 percent more likely.
Even the 65+ age group is adopting Twitter at a faster rate than so-called ‘early adopters’. Comscore goes on to explain why this might be the case:
The skew towards older visitors, although perhaps initially surprising for a social media site, actually makes more sense than you might think at first. With so many businesses using Twitter, along with the first generations of Internet users “growing up” and comfortable with technology, this is a sign that the traditional early adopter model might need to be revisited. Not only teenagers and college students can be counted among the “technologically inclined,” which means that trends are much more prone to take off in older age segments than they used to.
So there you go. Old folks are the new early adopters.
If you’re feeling slightly emboldened by finding yourself at the cutting edge of the Web, I could spew out one of those posts listing the 48 best tools/tips/practices for using Twitter.
But I won’t. It’s hardly a decent enough reason.
However, I will point you in the direction of Twitscoop, which shows all the trending subjects being talked about on Twitter at any given moment in real time. You can watch the terms ebb and flow as more or less people mention them. Simply putting your cursor over any of the terms will bring up the latest few tweets to put them in context. And at least one should have a link to take you to a full story somewhere.
You can watch the Web’s very own ticker tape morph before your very eyes on any topic whatsoever.
Then, once you’ve done that, do a search for your business, the products you sell, or terms related to your industry and see if anybody’s been talking about those.
That should give you something to chew on. 
This article has 15 responses
Old Gimmers Sink Their Gums into Twitter http://tinyurl.com/dxe4es
@Paul -Great find. I wish I had these #s a week and a half ago for the WVEEA conference. Will definitely use them for AITP in June.
Paul,Twitter revolution comes from the way the students are organizing, they are using twitter, social media (youtube, flickr etc) and text messages to organize and get the word out. Little tenuous I realize, but TechCrunch (or TwitterCrunch as I prefer to call them lately) also refers to this as the twitter revolution and give examples.Little slow with my reply, but sometimes I get outside and the internet has to wait.
I think you say it all in your reference to Techcrunch as Twittercrunch.
Let’s be fair, nobody in their right mind would organize a revolution via Twitter.
1. You couldn’t expect it to actually stay up for any significant part of it. Was the fail whale a sign to storm the parliament building?
2. Would you actually signal the authorities to your every move? I’d be more inclined to use identi.ca on a secure domain.
Yeah, I might use it to spread disinformation, but I think a commenter said it best in an article on Wired:
“Ok, as a Moldovan, I have to say there is a reason why these protests are happening. It’s not because we want to advertise Twitter. “
I think you say it all in your reference to Techcrunch as Twittercrunch.Let’s be fair, nobody in their right mind would organize a revolution via Twitter.1. You couldn’t expect it to actually stay up for any significant part of it. Was the fail whale a sign to storm the parliament building?2. Would you actually signal the authorities your every move? I’d be more inclined to use identi.ca on a secure domain.Yeah, I might use it to spread disinformation, but I think a commenter said it best in an article on Wired:”Ok, as a Moldovan, I have to say there is a reason why these protests are happening. It’s not because we want to advertise Twitter. ”
From further on in that comment just for reference….”there are the people that used Twitter and Facebook to gather in the
main square and a bunch of other people instigating and throwing rocks
at buildings.”It may be a western tag, but it was one of the tools used so take it as you will. Is twitter a great way to organize a protest? Probably not.Do I care about twitter in the least? No, I don’t use it and refuse to sign up for an account. I think that your reference to it as a carcass that is getting way to much attention is spot on. I am however saying the title “Twitter Revolution” is less tenuous than you implied.And to finish another quote from that same comment:”If you actually bother to check #pman on Twitter you will see that all
communication is done either in Romanian or English. “