Mele’s Musings

Twitter Nation: Microblogging is huge, but should anyone care?

When’s the last time you sent a Tweet? If your answer is anything other than “a few hours ago” you need to read this article – because you don’t get it.

Picture: Google Images

Article excerpt: The first thing Amanda Mooney, 22, does when she wakes up in the morning is fire up her laptop. She opens “a crazy amount of tabs” and checks in on her Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and YouTube friends. A self-described “digital native” who graduated from Emerson College in Boston this summer, Mooney contributes her thoughts to her new employer’s blog at Edelmandigital.com, as well as at Americanshelflife.com. She chats on AIM, publicly bookmarks favorite posts on Digg and Del.icio.us. And, of course, she twitters. And twitters and twitters. On Twitter, the service that lets you keep the world abreast of your doings in 140 characters or less, “you post a thought and you never know who is going to jump in and join that conversation with you,” says Mooney. “You sort of forget that it’s a really, really public form of [instant messaging].” She’s reviewed the new movie “Wanted,” shared a dream about standing in line to buy the new iPhone and sent out links to new sites she has found interesting. For Mooney and the million-odd microbloggers out there, no thought, however trivial, goes undigitized. First there was Facebook—where members are able to share instant thoughts or whereabouts with their social network by writing a pithy “status update” (Example: Brian is writing a story about microblogging). Now there is a rash of new self-publishing tools that seem to launch on a weekly basis. In the last few months alone, services like identi.ca, Pownce, and Plurk have popped up. Arguably the hippest is Tumblr. Launched last year, it allows people to subscribe to—or follow—each other’s “tumblelogs” and netted a bit of microfame for the odd vapid oversharer and facilitated the expression of at least one Garfield fan’s flash of inspired genius.
The rest: newsweek.com

Musing: The micro-blogging craze is real. Not only does Twitter have over a million unique a month, but there are plenty of competitors coming into the space. I admit, I find Twitter a bit odd – despite the fact that I bring it up a lot. But, I think the gap between those who “get” Twitter and those who don’t is generational. Spend time with anyone 30 and under, and you understand very quickly that constant texting is just part of the day. A few months ago, my younger brother-in-law and I were talking about how he should respond to a text from a girl – not a phone call, but a text – and what the best way to respond is. Very odd! This, however, is the epitome of the difference between those called “digital natives” and those who are immigrants. No matter how hard we “old folks” try, we just don’t quite get it. But that doesn’t mean the shift isn’t real. As marketers, we have to determine ways to get into the conversation. That may not mean being on everyone’s Twitter list (it may, though), it may mean finding ways to make communication easier for people.