Twitter "A Fad?"

I realize that there will be a lot of people who will not be happy about this post. But I only report the facts ma'am.

Disclaimer first!

I am not a huge fan of Twitter and believe that the adoption of Twitter is overblown and hyped. Having used it - I believe it has some value in specific circumstances - but not to the level that the hype might have led all of us.

So it was very interesting to read about the media storm around Matthew Robson (aged 15 years and 7 months) and his piece which Morgan Stanley has published:

http://media.ft.com/cms/c3852b2e-6f9a-11de-bfc5-00144feabdc0.pdf

OK so this was widely reported. Now comes some hard evidence that says that the expectation of the behaviour of teenagers by adult pundits may indeed be all wrong.

Today eMarketer published some interesting stats from Neilsen and (surprisingly HBR). In April, Nielsen Online found that only about 40% of the service’s new users return the following month. A Harvard Business School study estimated that most Twitter users sent an average of only one tweet in their lifetime.

Find the article here:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007185

I highly recommend reading both Matthew's piece and then the hard data from eMarketer. It puts things in context.

So it would seem that Twitter may at best be a niche tool and service may indeed be a fad.

At this point you will probably hear some of the audience exclaim that I am a curmudgeon. At the appropriate time perhaps I am. However I am not keen to use Twitter to communicate my message. It is just too restrictive and not functional enough.

Twitter is at least more useful than Second Life as a business tool. However its fall from grace may be just as spectacular. After all its just Twitterrhea...

Cheers