

Why Teens Don't and Won't Tweet - mmoorejones
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_teens_dont_and_wont_tweet.php

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spazmaster
Hasn't the writer heard of Justin Bieber? Who does he think his 6 million
followers are? I actually think Bieber might be a big reason why more and more
teenagers ARE starting to tweet. I recently did interviews with High School
kids and was surprised to hear how many of them used twitter.

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axod
Just because Justin Bieber has 6m followers, doesn't mean any of them tweet.

Twitter has always been more of a 'broadcast to followers' than a
conversational tool.

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josephcooney
> Twitter has always been more of a 'broadcast to followers' than a
> conversational tool.

Can you substantiate this in any way? This doesn't match my experiences using
twitter at all.

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dasil003
A friend of mine who got on the featured users list and went from 10,000
followers to 1,000,000 followers said it was like nothing changed. The number
of @replies and RTs didn't increase noticeably at all.

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nir
These type of articles seem to come from a basic assumption that non-teens do
tweet.

There's a gap between both MSM and the blogosphere and reality here. The
blogosphere is attracted to Twitter since it likes new technology and constant
self promotion. MSM is like the parents of a teen, trying to relate to their
world and hanging to some band name etc they picked up.

In reality, Twitter plays a much smaller part in people's lives than it does
in ReadWriteWeb or CNN.

~~~
joshfinnie
This is a very true statement. My geek friends and I tweet all the time, but I
was trying to get my girlfriend to sign up and she outright refuses. It is
easier as geeks here to see the benefits of services like Twitter, but in the
real world (and also in the teen world) it just isn't that important.

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lwhi
I think it's foolish to take the position of spokesperson for a generation.

Talk about yourself and your own group of friends by all means, but don't
speak for everyone your age. It's not realistically possible to speak for the
majority without a lot of research.

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yason
The author had apparently just earned his/her 5th age bit. When you're sixteen
you don't necessarily have many things about which you can speak with
authority, if you wish to do that. Your peers probably come closest.

(The fifth bit is the one that turns black and white into shades of grey. The
sixth bit will bring colors. I don't know about the seventh bit yet.)

~~~
lwhi
I think the seventh brings bitterness and resignation ;)

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wyclif
Does HN really need another Facebook vs. Twitter submission? I don't think so.

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borism
You're right. However this post gives a little more than that - an insight
into social media as percieved by millenials from one of their own. Nothing
new, but not entirely irrelevant.

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andrewcooke
Why is this only true of teenagers? Seems like the argument applied to most
people. My parents don't tweet for pretty much the same reasons, for example.

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joelmichael
Twitter is more "public" than Facebook, and so serves a different purpose.
Teenagers become adults.

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wyclif
Not if you protect your tweets.

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ghaff
At which point they pretty much serve no purpose.

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wyclif
But the OP was complaining that public tweets serve no purpose. That's one of
the reasons he prefers Facebook.

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p_nathan
Restated, the author's argument is as follows:

\-- Twitter is a subset of Facebook for the purpose of communicating with real
life friends. Facebook does the job better, too.

\-- For other purposes, Twitter gains in value, but not a lot.

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coliveira
My own experience is that 99% of tweets are spam, which means that it is hard
to find credible people using it.

For example, in technology the few people that have something to say are lost
in the flood of spammers. By the way, I don't think that using twitter as a
ping service for sites such as HN is helping the matter.

In Facebook at least you can rely on your real life connections, so the level
of signal/noise is much better.

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sandipc
"In Facebook at least you can rely on your real life connections, so the level
of signal/noise is much better."

why don't you just only follow accounts on twitter that don't spam their
followers? I agree that there is a lot of spam, but most of that shows up when
you search for a trending topic/hashtag. Those trending topics usually get
popular (obtaining 'trend' status) before the spammers take over.

~~~
coliveira
Of course, that's what we do. But the problem is finding those people.
Facebook provides a way to find your friends. A normal search on twitter will
reveal 99% of spammers and 1% or real people.

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patrickaljord
Given that Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga are constant trending topics, it's safe
to assume that teens do use twitter, lots of them.

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wyclif
_Twitter is a platform built for inclusive broadcast (to everyone), and to
teenagers it offers no obvious value._

The author does not seem to realise that the Protected tweets feature is an
option that obviates those objections, and makes Twitter function in the
"circle of friends" manner the author desires.

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AgentConundrum
What do protected tweets do that a Facebook status update wouldn't? Public
tweets have added value over Facebook statuses for some people, but I don't
see where protected tweets would.

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wyclif
Nothing, but I was responding to the article stating that Twitter is for
broadcasting whereas Facebook keeps updates from being public.

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adambyrtek
Defaults matter. Twitter is public by default and the whole ecosystem is based
on this assumption, the private setting is just an afterthought. Sure, you can
tweet privately, but then you lose most of the features, and I wouldn't rely
on security of that.

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chaz_littlej
These articles tilt me to no end. Who cares if teenagers don't tweet, really.
My parent's don't like Kanye - so what. It certainly doesn't mean they won't
ever tweet, if that's the underlying concern.

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antigua
Who cares? Teenagers don't have money.

~~~
Zak
A quick google search reveals this claim to be false:
[http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/teen-market-to-
su...](http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/teen-market-to-
surpass-200-billion-by-2011-despite-population-decline-817/)

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baddspellar
I understand why teens might not tweet, but I thought this sentence was
strange: "Teens' lives are entirely built around their actual friends. Quite
simply, why would teenagers bother using Twitter when Facebook exists, and
offers so much more?"

Since when have all of a teens' (or anyone's) Facebook "Friends" corresponded
to real "Friends". Oh, I know some are, but really, most are not.

