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Monday, July 13, 2009

UK teenagers don't Twitter. Not exactly surprising.

I'm a well-known Twitter skeptic. I still think it is value-negative; I have heard only a single semi-compelling usage case for me personally to look at (notification to people of my new blog posts). It's been hugely overhyped a few people, mostly in the media & tech industry themselves, plus a few narcissistic celebrities and politicians, mostly to talk to themselves and the sort of people who compulsively read magazines like Hello.

I'm getting heartily sick of companies trying to brandish their Twitter feeds at me - one website of a company I was writing about yesterday had such an intrusive bird logo floating over their entire site, that I gave up in frustration.

So I'm finding it deeply amusing to read and watch all the media handwringing about a Morgan Stanley report, written by a 15-year old intern. He wrote:

"On the other hand, teenagers do not use twitter. Most have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they release that they are not going to update it (mostly because texting twitter uses up credit, and they would rather text friends with that credit). In addition, they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their ‘tweets’ are pointless."

Another poster on Forum Oxford said his 12yo son (in the US) thought that it was "a bit lame".

I hate to say "I told you so", but remember where you first read the term "legacy Twitter".


4 comments:

superglaze said...

Hmm. I know your Twitter-aversion well, but something about the Morgan Stanley story strikes me as dodgy. Here's my thoughts: http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10013185o-2000331761b,00.htm

Alex said...

I wouldn't be surprised if teens didn't use Twitter much. However, the report also claimed that children don't use phones because they can talk over Xbox Live for free. I think the report is rather subjective.

Anonymous said...

I twitter and I'm a teenager from the UK. It is somewhat over-rated but I love it :)

Kelley Marie Mitchell said...

Are you suggesting that since many teenagers aren't interested in Twitter that it has no value? I help my son and friends with a college support group, and it came up that most of them did not know what LinkedIn was or what it was for. Does that mean LinkedIn is isn't useful because teenagers don't use it? Teenagers are early adopters when it comes to entertainment mediums but not when it comes to business mediums.