Or at least that's what 54% told online publisher Ragan Communications and Pollstream in a study on the micro-blogging service, saying people will soon tire of the hype and move on.
""[It's a fad] because everybody's doing it," said one respondent. "Ashton Kutcher and CNN have a steady supply of fans who want to know what they do. People like us, people with a job to do, every so often we do something of interest to the general public [but] we don't have that steady supply of stuff that the public is interested in."
Well, you might or might not have a steady supply of stuff the public is interested in, but I am sure you have personalities and opinions that fit the bill. More to the point, at least some of the 30 million worldwide users (or 1.5 million heavily committed users) will be talking about things of relevance to you.
Waste of time = time waster?
The study also found that while 28% use it, 40% have no future Twitter plan in place (I'm surprised this % was so low), a key reason being fear of senior management who see it as a waste of time - that age old problem of social media at work being seen as skiiving off.
Another factor was that organisations are just not geared towards social media. For example, communicators at one New York architectural engineering firm cited in the survey "are required to pre-approve all communication with clients, so the spontaneity and transparency made possible by Twitter would be muted by approvals." Each tweet going through an approval process before being posted, now there's a thought!
Get back in your box?
However, I've often wondered whether it isn't so much about whether Twitter is a fad or not. Rather whether it's simply a case of there being a ground swell of opinion from people who want it to be. In that sense it is like the virtual world Second Life, which it is often compared to in terms of hype.
There were indeed flaws in Second Life's model, but the key factor in the air going out seemed to be that a lot of pundits tired of hearing about it and decided it was time to put it back into its virtual box.
Hence, a lot of statistics rolled out showing how Twitter is under used, in decline, are actually being interpreted in a fairly selective manner. For example:
Another survey says that "only" 22% of GenYers (born post 1980) use Twitter. You could just as easily invert those figures around to reach a completely different conclusion.
If we agree that 62% of Twitter's worldwide user base is in the US, that gives us 18 million Americans - which is far from one in five of the overall population. So by the standards of that study, Generation Y is if anything OVER and not under represented.
Related articles by Zemanta- Twitter users can buy followers to boost popularity (telegraph.co.uk)
- Twitter hype punctured by study (news.bbc.co.uk)
- A round up of Twitter stats - 3/4 joined Jan to May 2009, 60%+ in US (thisisherd.com)
- Ashton Kutcher, Susan Boyle Warm My Blue Collar Heart (whitetrashmom.com)
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