TechCrunch had an interesting article from a few weeks back about why teens don’t (or do) tweet. As usual, it is important to try to find the story behind the numbers. The “story” (as summarized by TechCrunch) tells us that some studies suggest only 11% of Twitter users are teen which seems like a tiny number given how much we hear about the Internet usage of “digital natives” vs “digital immigrants” (barf). However, 11% is higher than the 9% of Facebook users who are teens and as everyone knows … teens love Facebook 🙂 Also, as a percentage of their age group, teens do tweet more than other age groups.
However, what I found interesting is the stuff buried down in the comments following the post which covers ground that we discuss on EdTechWeekly from time to time. Bottom line: It is hard to collaborate alone. Many who posted comments state that they don’t use Twitter because the already post on FB where their friends are. While we talk about the latest and greatest on ETW each week, we have noticed (informally) that it is really hard for new social networking platforms to gain traction when there is a dominant player already successfully servicing the same target market. Spending time on a new networking platform isn’t an individual decision. For example, I have had a plurk account for some time now and while there is the ability to cross post with Twitter, I find I never go to plurk. I already have an established network in Twitter, so why go through the headache of setting up a network (adding friends / sharing my user name with others / figuring out how often they log on) on a new social networking site when I already have a robust network back on Twitter. I’m guessing this is why it is hard to try to convince newbies to try Twitter. They sign up and then say, “Now what?!” They have no friends on the network. No one they know is following them … so what is the point? It will be interesting to hear the perspective of other Twitter users on the notion of getting over their personal Twitter tipping point.
