"Twitter isn't about following people you already know; it's about engaging interesting people from all over the world"                          

... Really?

Twe Twe Twitterlidee dee

Am I missing out on anything by not paying attention to a world built on 140 character posts -  known as the twittersphere?

To find out I start my journey with a quick zip through the beginners guide to twitter, which usefully gave me the guiding pearl of wisdom quoted above.

Then a bit of research.  Firstly who is on twitter?

Alexa.com reveals over the last three months twitter was the tenth most visited site globally (popular!), attracts a younger age demographic,gains most visitors from USA (20.7%) Japan (9.1%) and India (6.7%), last month spent 10-16k on ppc advertising - leading to 5-6k worth of clicks and interestingly had roughly 12% of visitors who either (or both) came directly from or went directly to Facebook.

Twitter was made huge during the 2008 USA elections but in my mind I think it is a phenomenon mostly based on the USA, or for teeny boppers who want to tell eachother everything (do you detect cynicism ) - perhaps I am wrong... 

According to a comprehensive study by beevolve: twitter has notable penetration in other countries.   In most countries women are slightly more likely than men to have a twitter account (India is a pronounced exception).

Female twitter users outnumber males till the age of 25 but from 35, female users start dwindling relative to males.  Teeny bopper alert - 74% of users fall between 15 to 25 years of age and only 6% fall in the 46+ age category.  Interestingly only .45% of user disclose their age, the most popular category of talk is family followed by entertainment and  25% of Twitter users have never tweeted.  

Deep breath, time to take the plunge (or perhaps flight is more apt?) and open an account 

 Which happened to be very easy.

Interest piqued I search twitter out for the most popular tweets of the year, Obama breaks records with his victory tweet - a photo of a hug with his wife - thought: mmm we can add photos. No 2 most popular tweet of 2012 - Justin Beiber - thought: mmm feel my optimism drain.



Ok well back to the account - what is trending now? 'Welcome back wild hazza' - some band member that has returned to the UK - thought: interestingly people are tweeting for other people to make the hashtag trend.  Second biggest trend 'mentionagoodcouple' some funny, bland and silly answers - thought: wow a global conversation on a get to know you/bustop topic - interestingly someone posts that it has being trending for 5 hours - thought: oh so this whole thing is a bit about being real time and temporary - good to know.

MM back to google - surely there is more to the global phenomenon that is twitter?  I look up twitter and activism - wow.  A simple synopsis of some of the ways twitter can help make changes opens my eyes, and this article on how the USA government asked twitter delay scheduled downtime amazes me.


Back to twitter I go

I have an interest in digital literacy, and type in the term - ha - what great results and links, and I really like that I can see photos of the people who are contributing.  I think this is one tool I should keep on the radar and investigate more.

 - what is your experience of twitter?