I ran across an old post on Econsultancy today which featured a study the results of which show that a minority of people actually produce content via Twitter. At first I thought it was a new study (another one? sheesh!) and I leapt in to comment and then noticed it was from last spring – DOH. Just the same, it’s good fodder for a polite rant and I rarely pass up such an opportunity. Also, some of the points in this post have come up several times in conversation online and off this past month and I thought it was worth touching on again.
So awaaaay we go….
The gist of the post was that this study suggests that Twitter isn’t that social. I don’t see how this situation is any different from real world communities. Communities are usually led and nurtured by a core group of members with the majority participating to one degree or another on and off. Just ask anyone who’s a member of a service club such as Lions or such.
It’s not a Twitter issue. It’s a human nature issue. Every single community I have ever been involved with online has more lurkers than it does participants. Again, that’s because we make up these communities and we bring the same behaviour we have in the real world to the virtual world. We can’t expect the virtual world to be some kind of utopia in and of itself unless we who populate it are willing to change our ways.
And who says this is even a bad thing? If we were all performers then the audiences would be pretty damn small wouldn’t it?
Two analogies for Twitter that I’ve come up with are:
- The CB radio of the digital age
- A crowded cocktail party
Either or both of these two analogies does a reasonably good job IMHO of describing Twitter in a nutshell and may help people manage their expectations of it. I think we sometimes expect too much from a network such as Twitter and the people who use it. I often hear people complain about what they consider rudeness on Twitter. Yes, it’s annoying when someone doesn’t respond to a tweet from you, but they don’t owe you a response and the lack of same doesn’t make Twitter any less social than say, a crowded party.
Studies such as this are very useful to keep things in perspective, but the studies themselves should also be kept in perspective. As demonstrated in this post, you can draw a number of conclusions from such data and it doesn’t have to be negative.
Speaking of social ettiquett!
Look for an upcoming webinar on social media ettiquett that I will be hosting with some thought leaders via Focus.com in early January. That’s January 2012, just in case you get easily confused what year it is like I do.
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