I liked your words about ‘pushing Twitter as a platform for keeping in touch with friends’ there at the end. I agree that it shouldn’t be promoted to young (or older) people in this way. Much better to explain it as a ‘real time’ search engine from sources you choose – or a way to literally ‘get into the minds’ of good people that you otherwise wouldn’t have access to. eg: kids following @tonyhawk – or any other celebrity.

thanks for the comment – this is proving a popular post!

Two things made me finally get Twitter:

1. The Search Facility – when I realised I could search on keywords that interested me and I would get back postings relating to those keywords, Twitter became exciting. I started following people who were interest in Rugby.. UFC… whatever. This meant I was getting information that I was actually interested in, instead of a bunch of stuff I wasn’t.

2. A stand alone Twitter client – By dumping the website and using Tweetdeck (now I am using Tweetie, much simpler for me) I was getting the postings pushed to me, instead of having to go to the website and keep refreshing. This made the conversations much more dynamic and fluid. also more distracting from work but thats ok I need distractions.

Twitter is about so much more than just keeping in touch with friends. It is probably the most complex social networking mediums there is, because it can be pretty much be anything you want, your not guided or told what to say and where. Its not so easily defined as other platforms like Facebook or myspace. This is no more evident than with the Twitter website, as it is so simple and minimal it’s difficult to know where to start and what to do. Also as its just text and no pretty pictures I think that can turn young people off too, its just not very accessible. Facebook and Myspace pages have alot of structure and convention about them, they look familiar and therefore so much easier to use.

But of course the simplicity and speed of Twitter are its strengths over the other platforms and why alot of people are choosing it over the more feature rich, bloated platforms. The ability to endlessly customise your page, being bombarded by pokes or zombies, having a calender, licking someone’s lollypop, I think alot people have got bored of this, they just want to get their message to the world in the quickest, most uncluttered way possible.

So where are they? Well I think they are using the tool thats right for them, right now. Maybe in a week, maybe in a year you will find them on Twitter when they are ready but at the moment they are having to much fun keeping in touch with their friends in a fun environment, being a zombie and poking people has its benefits too.

I think pushing Twitter as a platform for keeping in touch with friends is perhaps not the best way to promote it to young people, because they will only get frustrated with that use of Twitter initally, but pushing it as an information resource might give them a way in.

Sorry for such a long post as my first posting, I guess I didn’t realise I had so much to say on the the matter.

twitter:
A bit like a pub – old gits moaning about the world/jobs/kids/life.

It’s strange that I heard the early adopters of Twitter were teens using it through their mobiles when the SMS service was free. perhaps the web/ 3G mobile data only way Twitter has gone attract the iPhone generation, which aren’t the teens?

I think teens doing Twitter is unlikely to snowball – theory is people only have 6 websites they regularly visit – MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, Youtube are way more relevant and feature-rich for teens to warrant introducing another social ntworking site into that elusive 6.

But yes, ‘old people’, there’s a surprise – I recently blogged about what on earth young people could find interesting on a social network thats full of adults – the only thing I could conclude (apart from stalking their favourite celebrities tweets all day) is for networking for work experience placements.

If I had to put a young person in a headlock and try to convince them of Twitters value, I’d say something like:

‘your mates knowledge and connections are so limiting to your future potential to work, learn, travel and change your life, the sooner you start connecting with adults, the more ahead you’ll get in life’

…something like that.

mark

as for video’s I found a commoncraft one, which is excellent, but sadly, just really dull if you’re a teenager.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o

*DK puts away his crystal ball.

Would the two ever merge?!