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Twitter is for old people...

Posted by Cameron Laker on Fri, Jun 05, 2009 @ 04:26 PM
 

I recently did a presentation on starting a business that I presented to 40+ grade 11 and 12 students at the UBC Enterprize forum.

I spoke at length about leveraging social media in marketing and how MindField Group uses it for recruitment.  I spoke about Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter....

Not one person in the audience had even heard of Twitter... this totally blew me away.  Has Facebook create such dependency amongst its younger users that there is no need to find, test and adopt new social networking applications?

Is this what Facebook saw... $15B valuation, it leads me to believe that the 20 and 30 somethings were never really the target, but in fact it was the tweens 3-4 years ago.  Unlikely... but interesting to ponder.

Comments

My kids (12, 14, and 17) think Twitter is "lame" and "a total waste of time". They don't use it and can't figure out why anyone would. I found this pretty funny because, like you said, the 35+ demographic have folded this into their social marketing mix pretty neatly.
Posted @ Monday, June 08, 2009 9:53 AM by Diane Horton
I'd agree with Diane, social marketing is less about "throwing sheep" at each other and pokeing your friends. The advantages of Twitter that Cameron has shared with us recently far outstrip anything FB could offer from a professional point of view.
Posted @ Monday, June 08, 2009 10:58 AM by Ross Creasy
I think one plausible explanation for this could be that the grade11/12 does not have access to the internet via their cell phone (expensive phone plans). The allure of Twitter in part is due to timely information. 
 
 
 
Usually, the young pples are only concerned with what's going on in their own social network, and this communication can be achieved via texting.  
 
 
 
Posted @ Monday, June 29, 2009 11:33 AM by Shu Liu
It's funny because a lot of people assume teens must be all over Twitter. But just as you found, they are far less likely than those over 25 to have an account. My pet theory is that teens are inward-focused (private or exclusive communication with peers). Twitter seems to appeal to people who are casting the net more broadly to find people of like mind.
Posted @ Wednesday, July 08, 2009 11:56 AM by Briana Tomkinson
Twitter was certainly not meant for the kind of hashtag abuse you're perpetuating with your recruiting spam campaigns. Stop it. Please.
Posted @ Thursday, August 20, 2009 2:03 PM by Andrew Vit
Thanks for the last comment, yup, we are definitely over using them and we don't want our tweets to come across as spam. We will 'ease' up on them. 
 
For anyone wondering about hashtag use, here's the link on twitter's forum about hashtags http://help.twitter.com/forums/10711/entries/49309
Posted @ Thursday, August 20, 2009 6:18 PM by Cameron Laker
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