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posted by martyb on Sunday April 19 2015, @06:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the Twits-Twitter-for-(t)What? dept.

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.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday April 19 2015, @09:15AM

    by aristarchus (2645) on Sunday April 19 2015, @09:15AM (#172775) Journal

    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.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @09:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 19 2015, @09:32AM (#172777)

    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

      by aristarchus (2645) on Monday April 20 2015, @07:09AM (#173055) Journal

      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.