
Generation Y: We're just not that into Twitter  - peter123
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10265060-2.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
======
mcav
Most of my friends don't use Twitter. To them, Facebook is good enough. They
want to broadcast status updates to their friends; their friends are on
facebook; thus Twitter is redundant to them.

EDIT: Incidentally, I think that if Twitter had arrived before Facebook, it
would have garnered a lot more attention from my age group.

~~~
Scriptor
I wonder how privacy on the web would have been viewed if Twitter had become
popular first. With Facebook, people expect their information to only be
circulated among a small group of people (though practically this has been
shown to be unrealistic).

Twitter, on the other hand, seems to thrive on people posting information for
the whole public to see. IIRC you have to enable privacy settings yourself.
Now, did people in my age group actually want the Facebook-style privacy setup
from the start, or did Facebook influence people's expectations?

------
Oompa
As a "Generation Y" member that does use Twitter, I feel like my reasons
should be given. Facebook is for many of my good friends, while Twitter I use
to connect with a more technology-centric crowd. While a few of my good
friends that aren't very tech oriented use twitter, most don't, which leads to
twitter stream to be filled with more stuff that I find more interesting than
my Facebook stream.

~~~
pstinnett
I'm also a gen-y member and this is exactly the same way I use Twitter. I keep
Facebook strictly limited to people I have met in person, face-to-face. On top
of this I have most of my account locked down so that only friends I mark as
"close" can see all of my information. For Twitter I don't mind following some
popular developers, tech folks, etc. I also don't tweet that often - I usually
just follow those that interest me.

------
grellas
For average people, relentless promotional self-branding is basically absurd -
it is like the twit who would rush to school to see the grades the moment they
were posted - yah, you can do this, but most people would say, "get a life."

Speaking as a boomer, I would say most people like Facebook just because it
provides for nice social interaction - it lets you keep up with people you
want to keep up with in a non-intrusive way.

Twitter is good for specialized uses. If you have an expertise, or a strongly-
typed business niche, your followers can keep up with your periodic
announcements relating to your area. Since nothing meaningful can normally be
communicated in 140-character chunks, tweets often are just pointers to more
meaningful content. This is a non-intrusive way of pinging people for such
business ends and works better than Facebook for this purpose.

I would guess Gen-Y doesn't yet have as much need for the specialized-use
forum as it does for the social aspects of Facebook. Just a guess, though,
since I am too far removed in age to know.

------
Elepsis
One of the biggest advantages of Twitter in my experience has been using it as
a conduit for customer service. When I had an issue with checking in at a
Candlewood Suites, I tweeted about it and got a response from parent company
IHG. Result? My night was free (and I didn't even ask for it). Now I go out of
my way to recommend IHG hotels (Holiday Inns, etc.)

That's the coolest such experience I've had thus far, but advantages like that
just add a whole extra layer on top of the social networking part of Twitter
for me.

------
dbrown26
Twitter appeals to the 30-50 demographic because they do not have the
unlimited time it takes to deal with Facebook or MySpace. I'm 33 and have a
Facebook account that I rarely ever use because it just takes too much effort.
I don't want to spend hours buying virtual bumper stickers, uploading photos,
or any of the other myriad things that people with lots of free time do on
Facebook. I use Twitter as I can and it requires no more of me. Neither is
necessarily better or worse, they are designed to do different things.

~~~
Scriptor
Actually, and this maybe just be anecdotal evidence, many gen y people only
use Facebook for maybe a few minutes at most each day. We get on, look for
anything interesting, update status, post or reply to someone if needed, and
that's it. I think only a portion of my contacts actually spend time with the
more in-depth features such as managing pictures and using applications.

------
j0hnny
I blame CNN, et. al.

Somehow, they manage to make it sound really important yet incredibly unhip at
the same time.

------
thunk
A lot of people are just inherently contrarian. When something crosses a
certain popularity threshhold, it's disqualified -- that simple. I'm not
saying that's a good thing, just that it exists. I find that I'm that way
about everything except the indispensible.

------
code_devil
I also had submitted a note regarding the difference between them a while ago
... [http://socialapp.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/facebook-status-
an...](http://socialapp.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/facebook-status-and-twitter-
updates/)

------
ilamont
"There isn't an obvious way to achieve a self-brand on Twitter."

Am I the only one who found this comment kind of strange?

Maybe a better question for this group: Do any "Generation Y" members here not
use Twitter? Why not?

~~~
IsaacL
"Twitter is very popular with young people, according to reports about young
people by middle-aged people" - Onion.

I have Twitter, but never use it, for the same reason I didn't have a Facebook
account for a long time; very few people I know use it. I reckon it'll have
taken off amongst UK university students by the end of the year, though.

I understand the comment about "self-branding", though I think that applies to
younger teenagers. When I was in high school, I cared about making my MySpace
profile a perfect expression of myself (without looking like I was trying to
do so) - now I'm older, not so much. The comment about posting status updates
to show how cool and exciting your life is rings true, but I don't think Gen Y
is the only one guilty of narcissism, and we're not all that narcissistic.

In fact, I don't think the concept of "Generation Y" is a very useful one. It
seems like the Boomers were very united as a generation against their parents
values (at least how history seems to portray it) - us kids today, not so
much. Very few people I know would define themselves as part of "Gen Y".

~~~
IsaacL
I remember finding the whole generations concept fascinating when I first
heard about it, but I think this quote from the Wikipedia article sums up my
misgivings about the concept :

"Britney Spears is seen publicly as the female pop icon of Generation
Y[19][20][21][22], due to her enormous music career success and pop culture
impact during the late 1990s to early 2000s. Eminem is also a huge voice for
the Generation Y. His album "The Marshall Mathers LP" has affected many of the
youths in that generation."

This is about as useful as saying "the average human has one testicle". I
imagine the intersection of "people who like Britney Spears" and "people who
like Eminem" is fairly small, yet you hear a lot of this kind of thing, where
it's assumed that most Gen Y-ers were involved in all the trends of the 90s
and 00s.

I can understand that there's certain cases where saying "x% of people born in
the 1980s like y, compared to only z% born in the 1970s" can be informative.
What doesn't work is when the media starts trying to amalgamate all the trends
into a narcissistic, apathetic, social-network-using, ritalin-popping,
blogging, twittering, hyperactive, Pokemon-playing, tech-savvy, lazy,
childish, ADHD-suffering hip-hop listening, emo self-centred archetype.

------
imp
Any references to "generations" are flawed and only serve as an easy way for
journalists to make sweeping generalizations. Generation Y doesn't have
anything to say in regards to Twitter or anything else.

------
spoiledtechie
This isn't a joke, But I thought 18-24 year olds were generation X?

~~~
abstractbill
No, Generation X usually refers to people who were born between about 1960 and
1980.

------
steve_mobs
based on current stats 60% of twitter's quit after the first month. Using the
theme of the the article its probably because twitter doesn't do enough to
fulfill their narcassistic needs. For instance, on facebook when they update
they get comments and responses the make them feel good and make them use the
service more. On twitter not so much because twitter hasn't experienced the
network effect yet, where all the people's friends are not on the system and
other users don't see the value in following you since you are a nobody. This
means you have no followers and no one commenting on your boring life and
ideas.

This explains why the people with the highest amount of followers are
celebrities or famous brands. Regular people don't use it because they don't
get responses back bec. no one knows who you are and why your tweets matter.

