Twitter?
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Let's face it. Twitter is seriously overrated here. I might be a bias source but no matter what marketing ploy twitter uses or how about publicity they get, I don't see people around me using it.
It's been proven quite a while back that teens don't tweet. (Refer to readings here) But that survey was more or less targeted at US. What I want to state here is that we asian (or maybe just Singaporeans) don't do it either.
As of now, I know more adults (people aged 25 and older) using facebook that using twitter. Most of us probably only knew of twitter or only created a twitter account because it was very hyped in magazines and newspapers in that period of time. But really, it's like overhyped, and more like a play of reverse psychology where they try to rouse the public into thinking that twitter is very popular instead of it being popular among the public first. Just ask around, how many people do you know actively uses twitter? I logged in to my twitter account just now (Yes I do have one, but I don't use it), I can safely tell you that I can only find two active twitter accounts, in which one of them is created only after TIME's oh-wow-its-the-next-big-thing article is published. After probing around a bit, I found at least two more who admitted that they only created their account only because of the article.
Another thing is that I don't see why people will choose twitter over facebook as stipulated in some articles. Twitter has limited functionality and can only provide news feed. These are stuffs that facebook can already do and facebook provides higher interactivity compared to twitter. In my opinion, facebook remains a superior alternative to twitter in about every aspect.
Despite all these, there are still people deluded into thinking that twitter is the next 'in' thing and that corporations should embrace it without fail. These claims are quite unsubstantiated and without a decent percentage of Singaporeans active on that social networking site, these firms are just going to incur losses through this medium of advertising.
My take is that twitter is just a US thing, just like how the MySpace fad didn't get to Singapore. Who knows, maybe it's just a matter of time that people start using it but without a substantial improvement I doubt that will happen. Without your friends on a social networking site, it's not going to become popular (unless everybody wants to follow the celebrities to know what they are doing).
It's been proven quite a while back that teens don't tweet. (Refer to readings here) But that survey was more or less targeted at US. What I want to state here is that we asian (or maybe just Singaporeans) don't do it either.
As of now, I know more adults (people aged 25 and older) using facebook that using twitter. Most of us probably only knew of twitter or only created a twitter account because it was very hyped in magazines and newspapers in that period of time. But really, it's like overhyped, and more like a play of reverse psychology where they try to rouse the public into thinking that twitter is very popular instead of it being popular among the public first. Just ask around, how many people do you know actively uses twitter? I logged in to my twitter account just now (Yes I do have one, but I don't use it), I can safely tell you that I can only find two active twitter accounts, in which one of them is created only after TIME's oh-wow-its-the-next-big-thing article is published. After probing around a bit, I found at least two more who admitted that they only created their account only because of the article.
Another thing is that I don't see why people will choose twitter over facebook as stipulated in some articles. Twitter has limited functionality and can only provide news feed. These are stuffs that facebook can already do and facebook provides higher interactivity compared to twitter. In my opinion, facebook remains a superior alternative to twitter in about every aspect.
Despite all these, there are still people deluded into thinking that twitter is the next 'in' thing and that corporations should embrace it without fail. These claims are quite unsubstantiated and without a decent percentage of Singaporeans active on that social networking site, these firms are just going to incur losses through this medium of advertising.
My take is that twitter is just a US thing, just like how the MySpace fad didn't get to Singapore. Who knows, maybe it's just a matter of time that people start using it but without a substantial improvement I doubt that will happen. Without your friends on a social networking site, it's not going to become popular (unless everybody wants to follow the celebrities to know what they are doing).
Posted at 6:22 PM
