David Spinks is a graduating senior in NY that is utilizing the power of social web communities to pursue a career in social media/marketing. He authors a blog at Davidspinks.com.
If teens choose to start using Twitter, they will use it in a very similar way to how older generations use Twitter. The content they share will be different, and their conversations will definitely be different, but the concept will be the same. There are a lot of reasons that teens would want to use twitter, but there are also some barriers that need to be addressed first.
Reasons for Joining:
It’s been a big week for Twitter. Many are claiming that Twitter has finally reached “mainstream” status as celebrities like @aplusk and @oprah are building up a lot of hype around their use of the service and bringing their fan base with them. As teens see their favorite celebrities joining and raving about Twitter, they will want to join too…and why not?
Twitter provides many of the activities that teens have proven to love. Some of their favorite applications in the past were AIM, MySpace, and now Facebook. Like their use of these applications, their conversations on Twitter will probably concern less “serious” topics and will focus more on entertainment, sharing their everyday lives and gossip-based topics. Also, teens enjoy sharing content the same way current Twitter users do, but the links will be to more entertaining pictures, videos and articles that appeal to their age group.
Teens love to connect and share in their own way, and Twitter will be the “next big thing” for them to do just that.
Issues to overcome:
Twitter will need to officially incorporate content sharing and other features directly into their web application. Teens won’t be so willing to go to twitpic to post pictures and use url shorteners to share links. Everything needs to be in one convenient location. It would also help to have more content features, ie. a pictures page on user’s profiles that will show a feed of all pictures posted (with pictures actually in the feed). In a nutshell, teens will want more features.
Safety is a major issue once you start looking at younger generations. There were a great deal of safety concerns with Myspace and Facebook while those services allow you to choose exactly who can see your information and content. When you use Twitter, you’re talking to the world, and a lot of parents aren’t going to want their kids telling the world where they are and what they’re doing. Perhaps the privacy option will be of better use to teens than it has been to current users. Either way, a lot has to be done if Twitter is going to be considered a safe environment for teens.
Summed up, if Twitter really has hit the mainstream, it’s only a matter of time before teens start flowing in. This will bring a lot of changes (on a macro level) as Twitter tries to accommodate for its growing user base. How will it affect us individually? That’s to be seen.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment, showing us some social love or subscribing to the feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader.
tagged as 140 chars, david spinks, davidspinks, facebook, social media adoption, social media demographics, social media teens, teenage use of twitter, teens, twitter
[...] his blog, The Lost Jacket, that I wanted to share with our readers. Stuart recently blogged about The potential dangers of Twitter and other social media sites. He believed that Twitter’s lack of security will limit the service’s uptake and [...]
[...] Foster, a smart and wittily sarcastic consultant who created The Lost Jacket asked me to write a guest post for his blog. I immediately responded telling him I would. I wrote the post where a pretty [...]
[...] Cornell. A few days before we notified the successful candidate, I happened across an interesting article written by guest blogger David Spinks on TheLostJacket.com, a blog by Stuart Foster. I commented on [...]