Trying To Use Twitter the "Right" Way

According to The Economist in a brief entitled “A Rare Tweet,” “A recent study from Harvard Business School has dared raise one of the most important unspoken questions since a small boy wondered aloud why that Emperor fellow was naked. Exactly what is the point of Twitter? The technorati—and the media—may be enamored with the micro social-networking site, where people can keep their “followers” informed of their every move in 140 characters or fewer, but, it turns out, very few others are. The study, conducted by Bill Heil, a Harvard student, found that Twitter’s usage patterns are different from other on-line social networks. “A typical Twitter user contributes very rarely,” says the report. “Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days.” The study, which examined the activity of over 300,000 people who had signed up to the site, also found that the top 10% of users accounted for over 90% of tweets.

So, to return to the original question: given those figures, what exactly is the point of Twitter? Despite describing itself as “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected,” Mr. Heil believes that, in reality, it has become little more than a marketing tool for companies and celebrities. Quoted on the BBC, he said: “Twitter is a broadcast medium rather than an intimate conversation with friends…The Twitter management need to decide if this is a problem, and if they decide it is, how they will tweak Twitter to become more acceptable to the average user?”’

I routinely watch speeches from T.E.D. (just Google it), and the founder of Twitter spoke about the social media giant just a few months ago. He was asked what he thought was the “right” way to use Twitter. His response was that there was no “right” way to use the micro-blogging site. I agree. To disagree with the BBC quote above, there is no need to change anything at the core of the platform because Twitter followers determine whether the service serves them or not. If people are not happy with the way that an individual, a business or an organization is utilizing the service, they may determine privately that they will begin to “unfollow” that entity. If they are active and happy, they continue to follow.

Which brings me to this: Surgance and I are both interested in your feedback. If you follow me or us on Twitter, please send feedback if you would prefer a different type of tweet than you are getting. Are you interested in what you are receiving or is there something else we could do that would be better for you? We are interested in keeping you informed and creating dialogue. We are open to suggestions about other ways that we could utilize this tool.

http://twitter.com/BrianAudia
http://twitter.com/Surgance

brian AUDIA
President and CEO
Surgance, Inc.
Uncommon Partners. Common Ground. Remarkable Results.
www.surgance.com <http://www.surgance.com/>
702.468.4637 cell
702.309.SURG (7874) office

Posted via email from Brian D. Audia