One other random observation from the NETC08 conference: the predominance of, and enthusiasm for, Twitter among the conference attendees. Is it my imagination, or has Twitter become the Facebook-for-fogeys?Photo from my keynote at NETC08 thanks to Jason Young
[Technorati tags: twitter | generation gap | facebook]
3 comments:
For fogeys? I hadn't thought about it, but I wonder what the demographic distribution of Twitter users really is.
It does seem to have a strong acceptance of 35+ crowd. Wonder if that's because it's slightly less invasive than IM. Apparently moms love twitter.
I agree that it is the 'facebook for fogeys'. Those of us who aren't ready to spend a lot of time with all the 'fun' features in facebook or myspace, but want to move the conversation out of email and out to a larger group. It might just be the stepping stone (small steps) that we need.
Thanks for coming to the NETC08 conference! I enjoyed your talk.
I'm not so sure that it was all that predominant among attendees. I think what you saw was a relatively vocal minority (most of whom also have Facebook profiles in one way or another. I've actually seen more Facebook than twitter among .edu peers. Not that it really counts, those Facebook users above the Fogey line have very different usage patterns)
However, that doesn't invalidate the premise - there certainly does seem to be a predominance of older-than-23-year-olds in twitter. But I'm not sure that the numbers are there for twitter to get a real accurate comparison. I still get the impression that twitter is largely populated with all the techies, the early adopters in social marketing, and the immediate social contacts of those groups.
p.s. That *is* a creative commons attribution license on that image ;-) (but I didn't get a model release either, so I'll let you slide :-) Very much enjoyed the presentation, it was among my favorites I've heard in some time!)
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