Twitter Blip

I just don't get Twitter. Its user base has been growing exponentially - they now have 17 million monthly visitors, up from 1 million a year ago. But a Harvard Business School study found that more than half of all Twitter users post messages on the site less than once every 74 days. And 90% of Twitterers/Tweeters/Twitwads - whatever you want to call them - aren't Tweeting. The other 10% are generating almost all of the site's content. That basically means that the site has become more of a celebrity stalking outlet and place for businesses to talk about themselves - but no one is replying. The site's usefulness is severely limited if businesses aren't getting valuable feedback.

Or maybe the problem is that after the media firestorm over Twitter last year, it just didn't live up to the hype. Sure, Oprah and Ashton and Apple Twitter, and we all remember how our respected lawmakers were more interested in updating their statuses than listening to Obama's first speech to a joint session of Congress. If I were a celebrity or national politician, I would probably also love Twitter, since there would be thousands, if not millions of people following me. What a great way to keep my fans happy or get my political message out. But what if I'm just a normal person?

I recently signed up for Twitter to test it out. After 30 minutes of searching for my friends, I realized that despite my 350+ Facebook friends, there were less than 10 people I knew on Twitter.

Twitter may be great for tech geeks or Perez Hilton fans, but the reports of it being the new generation's "chosen" tool of communication are way off. My recent discussion with 30 undergraduate marketing seniors failed to elicit any rave reviews of the medium, and most of them didn't understand why it was so popular or why anyone would use it instead of Facebook, which by design offers far more capabilities.

So while the media is garbling up the fad, don't expect it to replace Facebook or have much more of an impact than it has. As Cara Wood at DMNews points out, the economic downturn has lengthened the sales process for any company, and 140-character messages on the web aren't going to cut it for most businesses' social networking strategies. Expect Twitter to remain popular as a place where Lindsay Lohan and Lenny Kravitz can attract attention by posting semi-nude pictures of themselves, but it's not the beacon of two-way communication that the media has talked up.