July 27th, 2009
by wildmarketingchiquita
Recently I was having a weekend outing with several of my friends when one of them lamented that she has trouble reaching college-age people through Twitter.
“College kids don’t see the point of Twitter because they have status updates in Facebook, where there are visual links that appear as icons right under their tag line–so that if you’re interested, you just click on it. Whereas in Twitter, you have to guess what the tiny URL is and for all you know, it could be a virus” my friend pointed out.
Very good point indeed.
What’s interesting is that Time magazine published an article on the changing demographics of Twitter–where originally in 2007 when Twitter was first launched, the biggest age group of users were 18-24 year-olds and now in 2009, the site’s largest demographic consists of 35-44 year-olds. What can account for this shift? Is Facebook really to blame?
To take this research result one step further–what is the most effective internet tool to use if your target audience is these younger people? Are you wasting your time and efforts tweeting out to college-age kids when the majority of them are using Facebook instead?
Some of the possible theories to explain this phenomenon are that:
- college-age kids and teenagers have not yet being launched into a professional field that has specific benefits from Tweeting
- Facebook and other social networking platforms offer more than Twitter does (applications, games, and other fun interactive functions)
- micro-blogging about daily activities is superseded by texting via cell phones
Whatever the explanation may be, this phenomenon cannot be ignored. The younger age group make up a large consumer market and business leaders must recognize this trend in order to adapt their marketing strategy to be the most efficient and effective.
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- Twitter Search–it’s like Google for Tweets!
- The Ultimate Combo: LinkedIn Now Works with Twitter!
- What’s Your Twitter Mojo?
- Twitter Search – Streamline your Twitxperience
Mike Lewis
(July 27th, 2009 at 12:38 pm)
At a recent talk at Stevens Institute of Technology the speaker asked the crowd of mostly 18-21 year olds to raise thier hands if they knew what Twitter was and about 25% put thier hands up. When asked if they were on Twitter only 1 hand remained raised.
While the site may be trending older it certainly did not start as a typical social network where Tweens and teens set the trend like MySpace and Facebook. Twitter seems to have done just the opposite.
In fact last month I watched a father explain Twitter to his son whom promptly said “Cool” and went back his Nintendo DS.
wildmarketingchiquita
(July 27th, 2009 at 1:56 pm)
Hey Mike! How’s it going? You’re absolutely right—Twitter never caught on with the youth! It was just so strange to me because young people were usually the first to jump on social platforms and they LOVE LOVE LOVE to update their statuses! I have a sneaky feeling that if Facebook did not offer status updates, Twitter may have a larger following. Some of my friends admit that they prefer Facebook updates than Twitter because Facebook allows for picture links and more interaction (The “Like” button, the comment box…etc). You think they’ll come out with an “Unlike” button option? =P
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(July 27th, 2009 at 7:16 pm)
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