

Twitter is not for teens, Morgan Stanley told by 15-year-old expert - andyking
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/13/twitter-teenage-media-habits

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handelaar
I didn't know anybody (but me) who read a newspaper when I was 15 either. That
was 22 years ago now.

Turns out 15-year-olds have never read newspapers. This revelation may not be
enormously useful to them.

~~~
Quarrelsome
I did! I was a paperboy, dear god did that teach me about how trashy
newspapers are and the shocking amount of people that read the very worst (The
Daily Mail was by FAR the most popular on my round).

~~~
gms
It's the same with everything else in life no? The large number of people who
watch trashy TV, the large number of people who eat fast food, etc. Principle
of least effort and all that.

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AndrewO
I think the bigger news is that he managed to get someone listen to the
painful truth about online advertising: that it's ignored or grudgingly
endured with little actual chance of conversion. Moreover, people are actually
learning to avoid looking at areas with ads (Banner Blindness:
<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/fancy-formatting.html>).

This is not new to web app creators, who long ago discovered that simply
adding Adwords to a non-monetize-able service was not the key to vast internet
riches.

But as soon as the marketing departments who buy online ads come to grips with
this, it's going to be a(n even greater) shock to older content creators (e.g.
newspapers) that have placed their hopes on online advertising as the easiest
transition to a web-based business.

Of course, I don't have any better ideas, and solving that is indeed the
million dollar question.

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vaksel
A 15 year old that got a job at Morgan Stanley is supposed to be the average
teenager?

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mynameishere
The "report" is extremely banal, with the only point of interest being the
apparent reaction to it. That is, why exactly is the media pretending this is
significant in any way?

~~~
nir
Well, it contains the string "Twitter". (To be fair to the media, I don't
think they're "pretending" it's significant - IMHO they, like Morgan Stanley,
really have no idea anymore what's significant and what's not. Next stop -
Nobel prize :))

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thatguycheese
It took a 15 year old "expert" to point out the obvious? What a world we live
in

~~~
tybris
When I was 15 I believed advertising didn't work.

~~~
jacquesm
I still 'believe' advertising doesn't work, but when I check out how much
'brand' stuff I own and consume I have to admit there is not much basis to my
beliefs (this is probably true for most beliefs...).

~~~
sachinag
If you don't think advertising works, seven words for you: The Most
Interesting Man in the World.

This campaign has done insane wonders for Dos Equis and the ads aren't about
beer. They're about some old dude with a beard.

~~~
jonknee
I had to look up what you were talking about, so apparently there are still
some wonders to be done.

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Loopy
One interesting difference i see between Facebook & Twitter is that i've never
seen someone being peer pressured into signing up to Twitter whereas i see it
constantly occur for facebook. I too share the 15 year olds position, i signed
up to twitter but hardly anyone i know in real life uses it and i'm not
interested in celebrities.

~~~
carbon8
From the relatively external POV (I don't care for facebook), this is just the
3rd round of the social pressure thing, the first two being friendster and
myspace. Facebook is the first one that has really also dragged in older
generations, but that's not enough to prevent it from ending up like the
others. Sure, there's no obvious single replacement on the horizon, but the
networks have switched platforms en masse twice before and there's no reason
to believe they can't again.

In fact, now that all generations are getting acclimated to the concept of
social networking, some of those new people will almost certainly start
looking beyond facebook, and with interoperable web services this could result
in at least a good chunk of the social web increasingly using focused
components rather than one monolithic system.

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jacquesm
A sample size of '1' and this guy is an expert ? One would hope that Morgan
Stanley knows enough statistics to get a more representative sample, or god
forbid a panel.

Of course, if they've managed to corner the one 15 year old whose friends are
a perfect cross cut of their group then I stand corrected.

If you generalize from such a small sample size to a large number of
individuals you are going to have to include some very large error bars around
your 'conclusions'.

~~~
notaddicted
Here is the article on Bloomberg:
[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=aG2U...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=aG2UIb23pNQ0)

Sample size is the kid + his friends.

If you just choose a child at random, you are likely to get an average child.
There isn't just one average kid, there are MANY, and a few weird ones.

~~~
jacquesm
This kid is from a certain social background and is likely to associate with
kids from a similar social background, unless he is a networker par excellence
and has contacts all over the globe with teenagers from every income level and
education level.

There are untold variations on that, and each of those subgroups has their own
'averages', this kid is at best - and I'm not saying that he is, just leaving
open the possibility - in the middle of his own subgroup.

~~~
dasil003
Of course, but these are a bunch of middle-aged analysts we're talking about.
Actually getting some first-hand information from teenagers is going to be a
huge step up regardless of statistical bias.

~~~
pageman
any suggestions for items in a questionnaire? :)

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tom_rath
So, a teen points out that many sign up to Twitter but few bother to use the
service after the initial novelty wears off.

That reminds me of another fabled kid who pointed out that the emperor was
walking around stark naked.

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loumf
If I was a 15 year old, I think I'd find twitter completely useless too. I use
twitter for professional networking -- almost everyone I follow or am followed
by is a potential customer, vendor, recruit, or employer.

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Tiktaalik
Though I can't recall where I read it, I recall reading another source that
claimed that teenagers and tweens did not use twitter but instead were more
enamored with direct texting.

It would be worth someone actually doing a study of this.

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jasonlbaptiste
Probably a bad sample to go from for the report. Same as getting a "social
media guru" who is 15 years old to tell you otherwise.

Twitter isn't liked by teens, but for other reasons outside the article.

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rrival
I'd love to read one of these from the US.

~~~
rrival
It's from the UK. RTFA.

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lucifer
here it is: [http://media.ft.com/cms/c3852b2e-6f9a-11de-
bfc5-00144feabdc0...](http://media.ft.com/cms/c3852b2e-6f9a-11de-
bfc5-00144feabdc0.pdf)

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tybris
"So?"

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mhb
And yet NYT stock seems unaffected. Go figure.

~~~
omarchowdhury
Down 35% YTD is what you call 'unaffected'?

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mhb
Unaffected by the kid's proclamations.

