A presentation I gave at the Online Information exhibition, Olympia, 3 December 2009. I outlined why people think Twitter is a 'time waster' and followed up with five reasons why it isn't. Short explanatory blog post at http://bit.ly/8yZuc7

1. “Do we really need to know that you just put your pants on, just brushed
your teeth, just ordered a hamburger, just finished dinner, just walked out
of the bathroom.”
(A Twitter detractor on USA Today)
Twitter - Time waster or Dirk Singer (twitter @dirkthecow)
value adder?

2. Social media specialist (not really an
expert) at Cow Digital...and Twitter
is a good place to make me seem About me
smarter than I really am!

3. “Twitter and Second
Life were hailed as the
next big thing - until
someone pointed out
they weren’t actually
big”
(Greg Verdino)
The case against Remember this place?

4. Second Life and Twitter
Second Life Twitter
1 - No one will shut up about it 1 - No one will shut up about it
2 - Perception that it’s for 2 - Perception that it’s for people
people with too much time on with too much time on their hands
their hands 3 - A lot of hype but the numbers
3 - A lot of hype but the don’t stack up
numbers don’t stack up 4 - No media back lash yet, but signs
4 - Media back-lash against it it could happen
5- Very quickly vanished from 5- Due to vanish from the public
public eye, became a minority eye, to become a minority or
or hobbyist pursuit hobbyist pursuit?

5. “I know we think we’re normal
people, but we’re not”
(Greg Verdino)
What did you have for lunch today?

6. “Twittering stems from a lack of
identity. It’s a constant update of
who you are, what you are, where
you are. Nobody would Twitter if
they had a strong sense of
identity....
“...I would guess that the typical
profile of a ‘follower’ is someone
who is young and who feels
marginalised, empty and pointless.
They don’t have an inner life.”
Oliver James
In the words of an
eminent psychologist

7. Is this what ‘experts’ talk about online?

8. Does anyone actually use it?
• In October, traffic to the Twitter site dropped by between 2% (Compete) and
28% (Nielsen)
• Twitter’s active - core - user base is actually very small. Sysomos found that
5% of ‘power users’ account for 75% of tweets. That would mean that
Twitter has 275k really active users (out of 5.5 million registrations) - less
than the circulation of most national newspapers
• Twitter’s rate of churn is very high - up to 60% according to Nielsen. Just
like Second Life, most people register but don’t participate

9. 1 - The numbers are in many ways
irrelevant. It has an influence out of
proportion to its numbers
So what is Twitter good for?
Five things

10. Who are Twitter
‘power users’?
• The common words in biogs according
to Sysomos:
• Web designer, internet marketing,
business marketing, graphic designer,
video games, software
developer...people who know how to
make things happen online
• Also bloggers and journalists - both are
more likely to be active on Twitter.
Sky now has its own Twitter
correspondent
• The common misconception - Twitter is
often a bridge to other media.
Conversations start there, move
elsewhere

11. 2 - Twitter shapes news events in real time

12. The four hour news cycle on
Twitter
• Thursday afternoon - blogger
Jonathan MacDonald spots an LU
staff member called Ian abusing an
elderly passenger
• Goes home and posts it on his
blog
• Friday morning it hits Twitter
• Friday afternoon makes the front
page of the Evening Standard
• How many customer facing
organisations would even know this
happened to them?

13. 3 - Twitter builds
relationships
• It doesn’t wreck real world
relationships, it strengthens
existing ones and builds new ones
• It’s a myth that we talk
exclusively to strangers online - a
US University study found that in
virtual worlds, people 10km from
each other were 5x more likely to
be connected than ones 100km
from each other
• A look through Twitter lists will
show that often they are grouped
by industry and region

14. 20% of tweets are
about brands (Penn The 2nd most popular
State) word on Twitter is “I”
4 - People like sharing their experiences of
brands and companies online...maybe even
yours

15. “Over the course of my unemployment, my Twitter account
grew from roughly 2000 followers to 5000 and it was
undoubtedly these impressive numbers and a demonstrated
knowledge of the power of social media that played a role
in my hiring and differentiated me from others with similar
skills.”
“It took being unemployed to really understand how
Twitter could be used to foster community and
relationships…for me, Twitter will always be both a
guardian angel and one kick-ass job placement board.”
Journalist and blogger Mark Luckie who used Twitter after being
made redundant
5 - Twitter can help you personally

16. At the very minimum - monitor!
Even if you use free tools - a
column on
Tweetdeck / Seesimic and
backtweets.com At the very minimum - register!
Claiming an ID back takes time
So what can you / your organisation do to
get the most out of Twitter?

17. Use Twitter lists
Use it to give
to build and
your company a
monitor
human face /
professional
personality
contacts
What can you / your organisation do to get
the most out of Twitter?

18. Thank you for your time!
Any questions? dirk@cowdigital.co.uk, Twitter @dirkthecow

19. Creative commons credits (flickr)
Grahambones
Rafeejewell
moe_s
TenSafeFrogs
L.Marie
decjr
dulhunk
Sankarshan
David Fraitz
MangakaMaiden
Metro Centric