Twitter, the haiku-based platform beloved of the punditocracy and journalists(?), is in trouble:
According to Pew, only 23 percent of Americans over the age of 18 use Twitter. Facebook, on the other hand, is used by 71 percent of American adults. These stats by themselves don't necessarily spell disaster for the social network. Facebook has always dwarfed Twitter in size and, moreover, the platforms are fundamentally different — tweeted content reaches far beyond Twitter's digital properties to travel all over the media landscape, from other websites and apps to national television broadcasts.
What's perhaps more troubling, however, is that only 36 percent of those Twitter users visit the site daily, compared to Facebook which is visited daily by 70 percent of its users. What's worse, that number went down a full ten points from 46 percent between 2013 and 2014. Statistics like these run counter to the narrative pushed by many of the platform's defenders — and Twitter itself — that while it has far fewer users than Facebook these users experience Twitter on a deeper, more engaged level. In fact, that's the entire argument in support of Twitter's ad revenue prospects versus other more popular networks — because, frankly, its user growth has been abysmal. Last quarter Twitter added a mere 4 million users to bring its total to 288 million, which has allowed both Instagram and Pinterest — two platforms that as recently as 2012 had fewer users — to surpass it.
Me, I'm really looking forward to picking up a new Aeron chair and foosball table on the cheap at the impending Twitter HQ fire sale in NYC.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @07:38AM
This reads much more in tune with it's level of importance in the world:
According to Pew, only 23 percent of Americans over the age of 18 use website. website, on the other hand, is used by 71 percent of American adults. These stats by themselves don't necessarily spell disaster for the social network. website has always dwarfed website in size and, moreover, the platforms are fundamentally different — tweeted content reaches far beyond website's digital properties to travel all over the media landscape, from other websites and software to national television broadcasts.
What's perhaps more troubling, however, is that only 36 percent of those website users visit the site daily, compared to website which is visited daily by 70 percent of its users.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday April 19 2015, @05:36PM
Those fire sales were the real deal in 2000.
I got a carbon fibre conference table and 3 Aerons - plus a raft of then current Sun and SGI gear for next-to-nothing.
Quokka dot com, and a few others on 500 block of Brannan St.
Let the bubble burst!
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Sunday April 19 2015, @07:39AM
I never got it. I still don't get it. What is it about all this exhibitionism and brevity? Is it not time that we returned to long handwritten letters to correspondents, in private? Just imaging if the writers of the Federalist Paper in America had been on Twitter instead.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @07:42AM
hashtag indepedence!
(Score: 3, Touché) by Thexalon on Sunday April 19 2015, @01:33PM
Some are so simple-minded they believe important thoughts can be expressed in a single sentence.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @08:47PM
Historians of Roman rhetoric sometimes talk about a change from a society based on oratory to one based on acclamation. In the Republic, speech acts are characterized by depth, length, and eloquence, as orators had to compose persuasive arguments to win over the people or the Senate. As the Empire wore on, persuasion became less relevant as decision-making became more centralized (the "Empire" under Augustus was actually pretty close to the old Republic in form, while after Constantine it was much more a monarchy), and the speech acts reported in later Roman history, such as the SHA, tend to be short advertising jingles ("acclamations") that one person pronounces and others repeat in unison. Thus the brevity of speech is taken as an index of the relevance of speech to decision making -- when the speaker can influence social decisions, he speaks at length, but when he cannot, he briefly repeats slogans and jingles.
Twitter is the electronic form of Roman acclamation. Or, in other words, Twitter is irrelevant to influencing major decisions, but it's great for retweeting slogans.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Tuesday April 21 2015, @02:57PM
A whole sentence?
[sig redacted]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @05:26PM
> What is it about all this exhibitionism and brevity?
> Is it not time that we returned to long handwritten letters to correspondents, in private?
It isn't like twitter is going out and deleting long-form private letters.
99% of what people have to say to each other does not require brevity nor privacy. Even if you aren't personally, humans in general are, a chatty, social species. Twitter's ubiquity is ipso facto proof of their value. Monetizing it without destroying that value may prove impossible, but that wouldn't mean the service isn't valuable.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Sunday April 19 2015, @07:01PM
I came here to use the exact same words. The damn dirty bird craps all over everything. It's probably caused more needless misunderstanding, mob behavior, and consequent hard feelings than anything else in online history. The sooner it dies, the better. Its usefulness for rapid information dispersal is far overshadowed by its usefulness for disinformation campaigns.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Darth Turbogeek on Sunday April 19 2015, @10:59PM
There was nothing to get. Twitter is literally a site where if you deleted everything, not a single thing of value would be lost - and frankly journalists might be actually made to work rather than just reposting banal tweets to show how outraged some wankers are.
(Score: 2) by timbim on Sunday April 19 2015, @07:53AM
Twitter is the fastest way to get information out and circulated around the world. Twitter is actively trying to protect its users from authoritarians. You can say the same for Instagram/Facebook.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday April 19 2015, @09:15AM
You said "information". I do not think it means what you think it means. The most important thing I remember having found out about from tweets was "Sharknado". "Sharknado" the first.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @09:32AM
You appear to have survived "Sharknado" the first. Would that have been the case had you not received the alert via twitter? If the Grammys had been monitoring twitter could they have been warned about "Left Shark"?
If twitter's sole benefit to society was alerts about "Shark" related entertainment events, wouldn't that be enough to justify its existence? Or were you satisfied with just having "Shark Week"?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 20 2015, @07:09AM
warned about "Left Shark"?
What is a "Left Shark"? Wait, what is a "Katy Perry"? Wait some more, what is "Football" and why do they only have half the time the rest of us do? So you see, even though Mia Farrow was able to warn me of an impending Sharknado, Twitter did absolutely nothing to warn me of impending copyright violations of a lame dance routine. Really? Left Shark is a thing? At some point, any culture immunizes itself from parody by becoming Sarah Palin, Justin Bieber, and Left Shark. There is no way to mock them, and so once again, Twitter is useless.
To the last, I grapple with thee;
From Hell's heart, I stab at thee;
For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.
Twitter is the white whale.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Sunday April 19 2015, @10:00AM
It's an echo chamber for media people. And a opportunity to ruin your career.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday April 19 2015, @05:38PM
Twitter is the fastest way to get information out and circulated around the world.
Ditto "disinformation".
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by damnbunni on Sunday April 19 2015, @01:25PM
I don't know anyone personally that uses Twitter that actually uses twitter.com for anything except making account changes.
Everyone I know uses some manner of client, usually a third-party one, on their phone or their computer.
(I use BlackBerry 10's Twitter integration and Neatly on my phone, Twidget on my Mac, TwittAmiga on my, er, Amiga. Even THAT has a client.)
(Score: 2) by nukkel on Sunday April 19 2015, @02:00PM
Social media sites will continue to come and go as people seek for the most meaningful way in which to communicate with each other online.
I just wish it didn't have to be so centralized.
(Score: 2) by danomac on Sunday April 19 2015, @04:48PM
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday April 19 2015, @03:47PM
Dog bites man. So when has growth not slowed? Any new thing grows rapidly at first, and then levels out. From the social media startup of the month to the open source framework of the week to the tablet of the year, growth always slows. Just the other month, people were complaining that Google was about to disappear because growth was going from silly down to merely absurd. (Anyone got a link for that story?) The real news would be sustained growth indefinitely.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)