The most recent numbers from Nielsen indicate that Twitter grew 1,382% year-over-year, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US. Not only is that huge growth in one year, but in one month like in January, Twitter.com clocked 4.5 million unique visitors in the US, meaning the service grew by more than 50 percent month-over-month. But can that growth be sustained?
It is hard to imagine that any technology could sustain that kind of growth. But what is even more surprising and potentially derailing for Twitters growth, is the lack of Twitter adoption in the teen market.
My 14 year old son is an avid text messager and Facebook fan. So recently when he had some friends over I asked them about Twitter and got several surprising responses ranging from “what is that?” to “wanting nothing to do with it”. That is sort of a bizarre dynamic if you think about it. Many new and innovative consumer technologies are first adopted by the teen market. But outright rejection of the technology can’t be good for Twitter long term.
While Twitter is definitely is the shinny new object in town and stars like Oprah and Aston Kutcher are racing to build followings. Perhaps the adoption of mainstream celebs will help Twitter adoption at the teen level but that has yet to be seen. In fact Aston Kutcher threatened to stop twittering recently because of an apparent stalking attempt, which could have an adverse effect on the technology.
Without a strong foothold in the teen market Twitter’s growth may hit an air pocket and if the teen market doesn’t latch on that could spell trouble for Twitter. I think the teen market needs to be convinced more of the value of twitter over SMS or Facebook updates. And long term Twitter needs more adoption by teen idols and integration with prime time TV shows to help capture the all important teen market.
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Tags: Twitter
Interesting points here, Paul, but I’d have to say that I don’t think Twitter really cares about targeting that teen market. Understandable, it’s a huge niche that’s typically intrigued by *most* social networks, but from Twitter’s standpoint, I’d assume they’re looking at sustainability from a revenue standpoint.
They obviously haven’t touched the revenue stream yet but I think it’s inevitable and they realize that the mainstream and tech markets will pull that stream in for them, not the teens.
On the flip side, Twitter has seemingly leaned more towards the mainstream than their original core tech/marketing markets that they began with at SXSW. We core users, IMO, would be more apt to pay for a pay-per model of sorts vs. millions of mainstream users. So to that, I feel Twitter has gone celebrity, too much and too fast, to be able to target a revenue model that would be most successful to them.
@ Sonny – I agree – it feel like they don’t care about targeting teens – but I think they should care long term
Hi, Paul. I’m curious – why do you think it’s imperative that the teen market engage with Twitter? The growth rate is on the up curve and will eventually level off, as with any new trend. Perhaps sustainable usage and engagement of the site should be the ultimate metric, rather than just acquiring new users.
I’d also be curious to learn what the Twitter attrition rate is? How many sign up and then lose interest?
Allen Weiss wrote a post on this topic a few months ago, here:
What the Young People Say About Social Networking
http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2009/03/what_the_young_people_say_abou.html
I tend to agree with Clay Parker Jones’s comment there, when he says, “Twitter isn’t valuable for younger folks (as far as I can see) because their friends aren’t on it. Their friends are on Facebook. And myspace. And sitting next to them in the quad.
“Whereas if you look at older folks–myself included–it’s much harder to meet people and to sustain relationships, simply because you’re not in the social pressure cooker that is university life.”
Then again, what do I know? I saw this in the teen room of my town’s local library this afternoon:
http://twitpic.com/6fank
So clearly SOME teens are using it… even if it’s only those who follow the librarian’s tweets!
I agree that Twitter is not quite a phenomenon amongst teens. However I find this as one of the positives. The fact this medium is meant for more serious business draws some of the best from across the globe to be a part of this medium. Though it may be contested that this might deter the growth in long term, my opinion is that as teens move into older years, they would join the ride.
I recently read somewhere that only 10% of the users account for 90% of the posts and the remaining 90% are those who close to non-users and those who signed up just to check out what it was.