A couple of recent developments prompted this posting. One was this New York Times piece on why teens are not attracted to Twitter. The other was to share with you another positive Telstra experience on Twitter that I had last week, and to share some other observations about Twitter.
I’ll start with my own experience, with a little background first. I have some history now, having signed up on Twitter as @conem just over a year ago now. In that time Twitter has grown about 10 fold from an early adopter crowd to almost being a mainstream social media service. As of this morning I am following 767 tweeple and 772 are following me.
Readers of this blog may recall I had a positive experience with @BigPondTeam some time ago. I was treated to a similar experience last week. I found an odd item on my latest Telstra bill, a charge of $2.28 for “Dial-up Internet Calls Telstra”. The thing is, we have broadband, not dial-up…I was left scratching my head. It just did not stack-up. While it was not much money, I decided not to let the matter lie. So I tweeted about it. About one hour later (6.37 pm) I had a response from @BigPondTeam agreeing with me that the charge looked odd and asking if they could help out. They surely did.
@BigPondTeam managed to find out the calls were to subscription TV operator Foxtel number to order Box Office movies. Eight calls were made between 4 am and 5 pm over the same day. In my response to @BigPondTeam I said that it was weird on two counts – we have never ordered a Box Office movie from Foxtel, and there was no one awake or at home when the calls were made! Anyway, @BigPondTeam said that was all they could do. We would need to contact Foxtel to resolve the matter they said. Still, got to be impressed with @BigPondTeam!
I tried @Foxtel but while they had some followers they had not posted any Tweets. I thought, why be on Twitter and not tweet? So I rejected that move. Then I shuddered. The next step was to make a phone call and go through the hassle of computerised directions in the hope that I could find a human to talk to. Actually, as it turned out I managed to speak to a human at Foxtel without any drama and got the matter resolved quickly. The problem with the dial-up calls put down to a software problem. A refund will be made the man said. Still, I wonder how much dosh Telstra has made overall from software-glitch dial-up calls for Foxtel movies?
Now, back to the teenager thing. There are teenagers on Twitter. Some follow me. But there is a rule of thumb when it comes to teenager communication preferences – literally. As the NYT’s piece noted, “Kristen Nagy, an 18-year-old from Sparta, N.J., sends and receives 500 text messages a day. But she never uses Twitter”. At 500 texts a day, who would have the time to do anything else? I’ve managed 1684 tweets in 14 months and I am one of the power users.
It is common to have text-like experiences on Twitter – conversations flicking back and forth. They are often good fun. The relationship side is important. Some personal, some professional, some that are weak ties. One-to-one communication is available through a direct messaging option. But the main benefit for me in using Twitter is tapping into and contributing to the rich information stream (mostly about communications and media trends). Oh, and getting my Telstra problems sorted out. I put up comments and links about seminars I’m attending or blog posts or news items online I have read or viewed, or photos or videos just taken or viewed and so on. The thing is, so do many others that I connect to on Twitter. I can track particular topics or events by hash tags that are used (eg. #gov2au for the Government 2.0 Taskforce). The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Question and Answer show uses #qanda for real-time Twitter interaction. Nothing beats Twitter for real-time information.
I use a third party application called TweetDeck to categorise my Twitter stream into everyone I follow, mentions of me, most interesting or core groups and favourite hashtags. I have TweetDeck on my PC and on my iPhone. I have columns for links to status updates of my friends on Facebook. My tweets show up in my Facebook and FriendFeed streams, as do others I’m connected with.
Bit.ly is a service that lets you shorten, share and track your links on Twitter. I can track how many tweeps (people with a mutual following) have clicked in the links I put up.
There are third party applications that measure Twitter influence. As Ross Dawson has said, influence on Twitter is not just a matter of how many tweeple are following you. Influence is measured by the frequency that you tweet and retweet others postings, the replies and direct messages that you send, and your use of hash tags to help others track stuff. Influence is about your reach – how many people is it possible for you to reach, say if you take all of the connections with others you are connected to into account. Check out your Twitter influence on Twinfluence.
Here is a link to a good article in the New York Times by David Pogue about tools for Twitter that a colleague passed on to me.
In short, I can understand why teenagers prefer text messaging. They mainly just want to interact with their mates. Whereas Twitter is about being in the information stream…and for getting excellent customer service.
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