Today, The New York Times offers an interesting perspective into Twitter and its use for families. The author goes on to say that she had difficulty turning her children onto the new “microblog” or “multi-SMS” service:
“But I thought Twitter would be perfect for my purposes. The service allows users to text a message of up to 140 characters to an unlimited number of people simultaneously, from anywhere. Anytime.
In theory, the five members of my immediate family could use our cellphones to broadcast our locations, kind of like a G.P.S. with words.”
The problem, it appears, was trying to explain how Twitter works. (We’ve talked about Twitter before on the blog).
“To get things rolling, I sent my daughters and husband standard Twitter e-mail invitations (“slatalla wants to keep up with you on twitter”) that contained a link to the service’s home page. Then, while I sat in my car in front of my youngest daughter’s school, I sent an update on my whereabouts: “car pool dilemma will French horn and trombone both fit in a mini” Then?
Nothing.
“hello” I typed. Three minutes passed. Four. Still nothing. For the first time in the nearly 19 years since I first gave birth, no one wanted to keep tabs on me.
Then suddenly my cellphone buzzed. It was my first Twitter — a text message from Zoe, my 18-year-old daughter, how exciting — and so I eagerly opened it onscreen.
It said, “twitter?? what the hell is this?”
Like all new technologies and cool toys, early adopters prevail at first and then begin to plateau, hopefully reaching mass adoption. However, we don’t know how many users are actually within the Twitter ecosystem. “Nearly 1.2 million users visited Twitter.com in December, a 223 percent increase over the same month in the previous year, according to comScore Inc., which measures Internet traffic,” noted The Times. (Keep in mind that visitors to Twitter.com is different from registered users.) Compete shows about 550k users for Twitter.
Fellow strategist for Latin America, Felix Leander, asked “I wonder what the proportion of Twitter users are in advertising/social media and just use for fun?” I’d love to know that answer.
February 15th, 2008 at 8:36 am
The name is a barrier to wider adoption, because it is too light and airy to adequately convey its power and flexibility as a tool.
At the Red Cross, we’re still committed to experimenting with it during some upcoming evacuations. It can be a great vehicle for reaching directly to those who need to know what to bring and where to go. The trick is communicating to them how to sign up via the cellphone - talking them through the steps one-by-one - and ignoring the T-word.
In that regard, I believe Twitter can be a cross-functional test bed for companies that want to see how this technology can work during crisis and disaster - realizing that an enterprise installation of a similar technology will have a greater adoption rate (and reliability.)
February 15th, 2008 at 10:24 am
@ike I certainly agree. I remember when Twitter was used by the San Diego Fire Department during the fires months ago. You’re right about the name and trying to explain what it is…it’s something that you just have to do.
July 10th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
cool site , thanks