<p>While not exactly a Luddite, I am far from tech-savvy!!!
My question is: Why does the media seem to be doing everything that they can to aggressively promote Twittering? Is it perhaps advertising dollars? Trying to appear “hip?” If I hear one more broadcast trying to work this type of communication in, I may just lose it! Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Here is my thought…everyone is on the twittering and/or facebook bandwagon. It is a free and easy way to constantly communicate with your customer base. Gone are the days of paying for advertising. No more classified want ad-use craigslist.<br>
Same goes for twitter and facebook. Barbara Walters can plug her latest book on twitter, the CEO of Zappos can get you to follow him and understand how cool he is and by association how cool Zappos is. Lance Armstrong can get you information about his charity and probably more than you want to know about what he is listening to on the massage table, what his newborn is up to, where he took his kids for lunch.
What’s interesting is that the same people who are twittering away are often fed up with their lack of privacy and paparazzi. Hmm.
The newest thing seems to be hiring a twintern. (Cheap labor college age intern to boost up a business on twitter and facebook). No more advertising staff or dollars…</p>
<p>I have to say, I just recently signed up for twitter & limit the folks I follow to 3 staff/faculty at my D’s college - and the CDC flu pandemic alerts. It has been fun hearing news and learning things about the college that I wouldn’t otherwise know.</p>
<p>Twitter gets news out fast and potentially to a lot of people in a short time. Retweeting REALLY can help spread the work (Retweeting = forwarding a tweet to all the people who follow your twitter page).</p>
<p>personally, i don’t know ANY high school/college aged person who uses twitter. i always see media reports about twitter, but they always strike me as not quite understanding the phenomenon. EVERYONE i know is on facebook for social networking, but twitter seems more geared towards companies, organizations, celebrities.
facebook has a similar feature where you can tell everyone what you’re up to with a quick “status” update- but theres a negative view on those who update too often (like, we all know everyone is on facebook for an excessive amount of time, but don’t broadcast the fact that you have nothing else to do all day by constantly changing your status). so a teenager who constantly “tweets” would be considered weird (at least if they are from my high school or university. can’t speak for different areas but i would assume that there is about the same attitude towards it in similar institutions/environments). watch collegehumor’s video “real life twitter” to get an idea of why regular people’s (i.e. not celebs, corporations, or the like) twitters are considered annoying.</p>
<p>bottom line? i think twitter is more of a marketing tool than something to assist social networking, at least to the age group that social networking is normally geared towards.
and i think the mainstream media that keeps writing articles about it doesn’t quite realize that normal people don’t take it that seriously.</p>
<p>i’m going to check facebook now…</p>
<p>Yeah, I don’t know anyone young who uses twitter. Some of my friends got accounts and used it for two days, but now they just follow people. I do however, enjoy tweetingtoohard.com. It has all the most self-important tweets.</p>
<p>I use Twitter to follow a few groups and news sources that I’m interested in. Check it a few times a day for updates. That’s it. But it is pretty cool…kind of like a customized breaking news feed. I can’t see tweeting myself though…I’m too private and my life is too boring!<br>
Also, I’ve had a bunch of people I don’t know start following me and then drop off when I ignore them. Some of them have…ummm… colorful names. Creeps me out a bit…</p>