This guest post is written by Geoff Cook, cofounder and CEO of social networking site myYearbook. Everything about Twitter is looking up these days, except for a few pesky uptime issues of course. But a number of recent reports also suggest teens are one demographic that just doesn’t seem to be embracing Twitter like the rest of us. So while I’m excited to see Robert Scoble proclaims that Twitter is worth a cool $10 billion, it might be a good idea to analyze a little data to try to understand why teens just don’t think Twitter is as rad as the rest of us.
Over the last few months everyone has weighed in on the question of “Why Don’t Teens Tweet” — except, it would appear, teens. We recently ran a survey of 10,000+ US teens aged 13 – 17 to see if we could add anything new to the question. As it turns out, the question itself is flawed.
To date, reasons given for the alleged aversion of teens to Twitter have ranged from the condescending “Because they have nothing to say,” to the responsible “Because it doesn’t feel safe,” to the Letterman-like “Because they can’t afford it” — at least without a mobile data plan.
Of course, all of these reasons are predicated on the widely accepted notion that “Teens Don’t Tweet” — that there is a phenomenon that needs to be explained. As recently as last week even, the New York Times cited the fact that only 11% of Twitter is teen as evidence of Twitter’s unpopularity to that group.
The implication is that 11% is a small number, but if we look deeper, it turns out that Twitter has a higher concentration of teens than Facebook. You can see in the chart below that Facebook is only 9% teen, so Twitter is actually more teen than Facebook, which rightly has never been perceived as having a “teen problem.” Facebook has so many users that teens just can’t be that large a percentage of the service, by definition.
Nielsen also suggested that “Teens Don’t Tweet” in a report that was destined to become a trending topic on Twitter itself. Almost as quickly as it came out, a number of bloggers, including Danah Boyd, debunked the study for charting the age group 2 – 24 and yet drawing conclusions about teens, noting there are not too many 2-year-olds on Twitter.
To be sure, the truthiness of the headline “Teens Don’t Tweet” is persuasive. It really does feel true, and on one level it is: the vast majority of teens don’t tweet. Of course, the vast majority of the adult population doesn’t tweet either.
As it turns out, teens actually tweet more than the general population, prompting Silicon Valley Insider to say yesterday, “Kids Don’t Hate Twitter Anymore.” According to comScore, Twitter’s unique visitor composition index in the 12 – 17 age group is 118 (a value over 100 represents a higher concentration of unique visitors from that age group as compared to the age group’s concentration across the entire web). More interestingly, Twitter’s 12 – 17 composition index of 118 is higher than its composition index in the 25 – 34 and 35 – 44 age groups. The bottom line: Twitter actually skews more teen than the average site, and much more teen than Facebook.
Similarly, the teens who visit Twitter do so 5.2 times per month, more often than users aged 25 – 44, who visit fewer than 5 times per month.
But, there is a lot more to the story than widespread misinterpretation of data. After all, why don’t the majority of teens tweet? The issue of teens and Twitter first got legs when Morgan Stanley published an influential report written by Matthew Robson, a 15-year-old intern from the UK, which became an instant hit. Here is the reason the report suggested that teens don’t tweet:
Most have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they realize that they are not going to update it (mostly because texting twitter uses up credit, and they would rather text friends with that credit).
To validate this explanation, we ran a survey asking thousands of US teens whether text messaging charges have anything to do with whether or not they use Twitter, and over 90% said: “No — I wouldn’t use Twitter anyway.” (Note: unlimited texting plans are common in the US, whereas the Morgan Stanley report was written from the perspective of a UK teen.)
Robson also observed his friends and classmates in the UK signing up for the service and then never using it again, a pattern that proves very similar in the US. In fact, in our survey, we found that 45% of teens aged 13 – 17 who have a Twitter account don’t tweet. Most send a few and stop altogether, and 17% never sent a single one.
Similarly, we looked into the idea that maybe teens are turned off by Twitter’s openness and consider it unsafe. We found no support for this hypothesis either, with almost no one citing “It’s too open” or “It’s not safe” as reasons they don’t use Twitter, as the chart below shows.
So why? Why doesn’t Twitter engender passion in even most of the teens who take the plunge and sign up for an account? The answer lies in the reasons teens do use Twitter. Of teens with a Twitter account, the top 4 reasons cited for using the service are, in order:
- Update My Status
- Keep Up With My Favorite Musicians, Bands, or Celebrities
- Stay Current with What’s Going On in the World
- Keep Up with Friends I Know
If we break down those top reasons one by one, a clearer picture emerges of why Twitter is not more popular among teens.
- Teens already update their status religiously on other sites like Facebook, MySpace, and myYearbook.
- Teens use MySpace to keep up with musicians and celebrities, which MySpace differentiates on.
- As a group, teens are not major consumers of news from any outlet, making “staying current” a poor driver of mainstream adoption — though of course there are exceptions.
- Teens use both MySpace and Facebook to keep up with friends they know.
Given the above, it is no surprise that teen penetration is not higher. The value proposition of Twitter to the majority of teens is the issue.
No doubt, this is why most teens describe Twitter as “not for me”, and also why most teens who are not on Twitter cite the generic reason why as “Because it’s lame.” Twitter doesn’t help most of them do anything new, so to them, it is lame. Of course, for those teens who are celebrity hounds or compulsive news followers, or those looking for an audience for their status updates, Twitter is invaluable.
But now we have come full circle. Most teens don’t use Twitter because it doesn’t enable them to do anything they can’t already do elsewhere, which is the same reason most adults don’t use Twitter. It has nothing to do with any teen-specific concerns like texting plans or safety. It comes down to something more simple: delivering value beyond Facebook and MySpace — a competitive moat that Facebook is bridging one move at a time, from the Everyone button to the acquisition of FriendFeed to the centrality of the stream itself.
The question of “Why Don’t Teens Use Twitter?” is the question of “Why Doesn’t Everyone Use Twitter?” The answer, it would seem, is both obvious and heretical … maybe Twitter isn’t for everyone.
Additional Teens & Twitter Survey Results:
Disclaimer: Here is some more info on the panel of teens we surveyed. We don’t claim the 10,000+ survey results represent the definitive survey of teens in the US. We do, however, claim that our users look very much like the users of other social networks and that our audience overlaps significantly with MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, and that the insights of myYearbook teens may be useful to this analysis.
I’m a teen, I tweet. But the reason I tweet is for web development purposes, if I was a ‘regular’ teen, why would I need to? Theres no reason. Facebook does the job.
exactly! I picked up Twitter to see how “BIG” the thing actually is when everyone was talking about it.. i never hook up to it and now i tweet once awhile when i felt i like to but i facebook everyday, every moment…
Twitter Vs. Facebook?????
Though both are social networks, each serves it’s own purpose and meets various ends. FB is mainly meant for networking of friends whereas Twitter joins a lot of people together and focuses on current trends and information sharing. Maybe teens are not for lot of information sharing.
>> Of course teens don’t get an interesting discussion with 140 characters. FB gives a handful of options and seems more entertaining than Twitter. Maybe that is the reason.
Most probably teens tweet but an increasing number of other agers are also doing more of tweeting.. Maybe it is just that teens’ density in twitter is less compared to adults. Actually, what we need to check is whether these teens grow to become tweeting adults.
Exactly… same here! I absolutely agree. When I tweet, its directed to the world of followers, mostly technology focused. When I write something on Facebook, it’s directed at my actual friends. Most teens don’t really have anything to say to the general world. They would rather say it to their friends.
Sure, technically all your friends could join Twitter and be your followers and then you would be talking to your friends. But, there is absolutely no point. Facebook does the job and it is set up better for real life friends. The follower/following social graph works great for social networks where it isn’t as important that you personally know the people that you are interacting with. However, on Facebook, the two way, “friend”, social graph makes it much better for teens who want to interact with real people.
I’m a teen, just like those surveyed here, and I agree with Spencer. My main purpose in creating a Twitter account was to engage in conversations with people who have similar interests as mine, like technology. I reserve facebook to engage in conversations with friends about anything, but usually more personal stuff.
Though I like Twitter and don’t find it “pointless”, I think most teens are not moving towards the service because they are not able to engage in conversations easily. Rarely does one reply to a a direct message or reply. On facebook, where there real friends exist, posting the same message would garner comments, and likes, thereby creating a conversation. Just my two cents.
I use twitter to follow and keep up to date with developments in industries I have an interest in, I don’t use it for social interaction very much – that’s what facebook is for – so for the average teen, someone who just uses the web for social interaction, they’d have no reason to use it. That and the horrible misconception that twitter is just for telling people you’ve done a shit.
Im 17 and i tweet quite a bit
I’m 14. I found this all really interesting, first with Matthew Robson’s report and then Nielsen’s. I think the answer as to why teens don’t tweet is more psychological than statistical. I have written a full report as to the psychological reasons for why teens don’t tweet.
Read it here http://www.izeb...dont-tweet.html
Feel free to contact me at moorejones.michael@gmail.com for any questions or comments.
Michael,
Impressive report! Well done.
Watching the trending topics on Thursday there was no doubt that UK teens tweet; GCSE, A’s and B’s were all trending – a direct results of 16 year olds tweeting their exam results. It wasn’t just their parents!
I disagree, to get a trending topic on twitter is ridiculously easy. If we compare the amount of tweets you need to get a trending topic and the amount of teenagers who got their results a few days back the resulting number is tiny. There were just over 650,000 teens who collected their results, now think about how many tweets it takes to get a trending topic; on a slow day you could easily do it with 500. So 500 – if we assume only 1 tweet per person – people tweeted about their results out of >650,000. Tiny.
Teens not only tweet, I seen an increasing number of them doing so, at least here in the SE US, where T-Mobile is big, on Android phones. The iPhone market and Apple headspace skews kind of old – thirteen year olds are getting their parents to get them Google phones. There’s no carrier switching involved, which teens can’t generally do, anyway.
I’m 14 and I tweet a good amount. Most people I know have never even heard of Twitter, and if they have, they’re most likely already using a social network (Facebook is the most popular in my grade) and they see no need to get another. Now, I’m a computer geek, so naturally I have an account all over.
A lot of people think it’s just a waste of time, but I beg to differ. I like Twitter more than the Facebook status updates, plus I can use it as an RSS reader of sorts to keep up with all of the updates from my friends, blogs I read, and even my school.
I think it’s really useful.
I feel that in general people who tweet are also people who blog. I’d like to see figures supporting (or not) that.
You don’t want teens to tweet,wrong demographic
Wrong market, you want more mature more real
You should look through your own tweets, they’re awful.
Maybe but that was not the point was it
wow, your tweets really are awful.
Ha! you sound like a grumpy old man, tired of street punks who keep swiping your paper before you can get it in the morning….. Meh…mmmmfffff…meh!
Why are all your tweets about child porn and the phillipines? Maybe I just don’t get Twitter…
I agree with Charles. Teens tweet, they start complaining about bullshit we don’t need.
I beg to pardon. I’m a twelve year old designer and when I Twitter, I don’t complain about stuff you don’t need. If all you do is cuss at the supposed “future”, then maybe there is something to worry about.
Most teens will Facebook and Twitter using a very high age, such as 67. These numbers probably come randomly from the number pad. This is true, because I know all of my friends do this.
Please don’t insult us, because we aren’t stupid. I’m getting extra pocket money from designing websites.
This is the first time I’ve ever heard of myYearbook.
+1
+2
Facebook is lame.
+1
+2
I’m (almost) sixteen and I use Twitter pretty reguarly, mainly for connecting with other likeminded (read: technology) individuals, and keeping up with the latest stuff (news and so on).
Although, I have none of my friends on there. :p I’ve made a few sign up, they’ve tweeted a few times and then given up.
It’s pretty much to do with *how* they’d update Twitter. Being in Australia, if Tweets were texted in, they’d be charged at 50c/update. Not pretty, and to round that off SMS notifications aren’t available. We can’t subscribe to users and have their tweets SMS’d.
For me, it’s pretty easy having an iPhone and a decent data plan (150mb/A$10) – I have a quick browse through Tweetie in my spare time, and I also have ‘iTweetReply’ installed for push twitter mentions and direct messages, so people can get in touch with me, just like that.
However, my not-so-tech-savy friends are stuck in the stone age with their phones; the majority have the ‘Nokia 6120′, which drove me insane with it’s web browser, and it is much harder to quickly check Twitter and update it.
- Beau Giles (@BeauGiles)
“Most teens don’t use Twitter because it doesn’t enable them to do anything they can’t already do elsewhere, which is the same reason most adults don’t use Twitter.”
I resisted Twitter for a long time for similar reasons – I thought it was all following Mrs. Stephen Fry.
Like most everybody else, I stayed for the search.
Teens don’t tweet because it is too much work.
Yeah, writing those 140 characters is a lot of work… Phew.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Interesting, but I think there’s something else going on as well. Teens experience more of micro-communities. Adults have more of macro communities, where we’re probably not as judged by our peers. The dominance of 1-1 communication is pretty well handled by FB/IM/TXT, why engage in a more social, passive medium. Said more simply, it’s not features/functions, it’s psychology.
I would like to point out that you never asked me. I use Twitter, add that to your statistics.
Why all of the ’studies’?, this one is easy. Teens don’t tweet because they aren’t self-involved losers without a life or an agenda to pimp.
Umm, unless you were going for brilliant parody, you pretty much just shot a donut hole in your own argument.
$5-10 Billion! LOL
I have always considered Scoble an idiot, but now I know he is just insane. Seriously. I feel embarrassed for him.
Myspace is lame and as gay as pink paint, not twitter.
Interesting piece. I’ve been trying to use twitter again, lately… I searched and followed about 100 english speaking people in my area (a big city overseas) to see what’s going on there. All I get is self-promotion by local bloggers, RTs from techcrunch and useless status updates… plus loads of spambots. 99% useless crap.
I’ve also tried to give Twitter another try and had the same experience as you–99.9999% worthless crap!
Age segmented is probably not as useful as interest/content utility categorizing. I enjoyed your look at needs for favorite musicians, news. I would estimate that these needs are age insensitive in that users who get this information elsewhere have little need to engage in twitter.
I’m 18 and I love it
So your main conclusive evidence after asking 10,000 teens, was that they don’t use Twitter mainly because they think it’s lame and its not for them.
Were you gutted when something more constructive didn’t come out of the poll?
Twitter is a pure marketing tool, nothing more, there is no mind blowing comments or insights, teens know this, when they do grow up, they will have their own forum
right now fine, great way to get the American public to say reality show type comments
teens won’t spend money on this, they still have brains, so who cares
best demographic is 25 to 46
Exactly…Have you ever tried to read the comments on, say, a Yahoo article or Youtube video? Twitter is the same thing–complete nonsense
I’m not sure why people care. Teen market is so fickle, they can’t spend really without a parent or permission, and then they grow up so you lose them.
People are overthinking this.
No one cares. I can’t believe you are investigating this further.
Twitter is not about connecting with friends, as that’s what Facebook is for. Twitter is about connecting with people in the area of your interest and having VERY short discussions with them. If it were just for status updates, that’d be incredibly boring, and Facebook serves that purpose pretty well.
Speaking of which, there are 2 kinds of Twitter users:
a) Celebrities that merely want high follower counts
b) Users who want to talk to people in their area of interest.
I think the difficult problem right now is that it’s hard to find interesting people in your area of interest. Twitter needs to allow users to identify themselves by 1-2 different subject areas and then allow you to easily find new people in that area. For example, if there were a stream just for people that were marked as “Technology”, you’d get a lot more people interested (and so on with things like fashion, news, sports, etc…)
One thing I HATE about Twitter though is that there are a bunch of people/companies that are merely posers full of link-baiting and porn. Useless!
I totally agree. I use Twitter mostly to follow people I respect in my field and areas of professional interest (progressive politics and online grassroots organizing). They read interesting articles, blog posts, etc, tweet them, and it saves me the trouble of sorting through all the 10 billion articles/posts out there on any given day. I also use it for getting interesting local news, and new info on one or two products I like, such as Rockband.
I do like the idea of letting people tag themselves to help others find them.
You know I love tech crunch for the most part, interesting stories funny comments, and even now and then it make you think, but who really cares Twitter is tool only, pure hype, so we can market and sell to others, it is no more, the iPhone face book all the same, great fun, a wonderful distraction and some of us make nice money from them
But call them what they are, tools a new way to make money only, not some life changing event, anyone with kids will tell you, life is lived through living, I love making money, love my family more.
Teens are not going to pay my bills, as a matter of fact mt teens for the most part are my bills.
Twitter all this is fun makes money, WOW so did the printing press when it first came out
Make money, save your money have a family, but do not get too wrapped up in the latest trend, but if you can make money off HELL yeah
I can appreciate all the teens posting above indicating that they tweet, but really, is it any surprise that teens who read TechCrunch tweet?
I do think point in time measurements of new trends/fads/products are fairly useless though – what’s really important is to measure the change in Twitter adoption within age groups over a period of time. That’s the best indication of whether or not Twitter is in decline, stagnating, or growing among certain demographics.
I also think it would be interesting if we could somehow understand what % of teens are twitter users without realizing they are. My Facebook status updates via Twitter. In reality, any teen who reads my status on Facebook is a Twitter user.
That’s what I love about the continued development of open API’s and the sharing of data on the web these days. Success can come in so many quick, surprising, unpredicted ways. It’s like the theory of evolution applied to technology development! To quote Spock: “Fascinating.”
it was nice reading the article, thanks for the post
if teens don’t tweet, then how are the trending topics Jonas Brothers-related all the time? (;
First of all, I’d like to say I’m 17. I have both a Twitter and a Facebook, but no Myspace (can’t stand the place), and I’ve never heard of “My Yearbook.”
I have 2 Twitter accounts. @lyskan117, and @AyasakiMidori. My main account (lyskan117) Is the account that’s linked to my phone, and to my Facebook. I mostly use it for “serious” tweets, or things most people would tweet about. It has just over 1,000 tweets on it. My other “fun” account (AyasakiMidori) is used for what I call TwitteRP, which is, obviously, Roleplaying via Twitter. This account has over 4,000 tweets… in the last month or so. I think Twitter is a great place for dialogue roleplaying, because of the 140 character limit and the instant connectivity, whether by text, mobile web, or computer.
Twitter is also a great place to connect with likeminded people from around the world, as well as people from other communities you are in, who may not feel comfortable giving out their Facebook information.
I’d answer all the questions, but doing that would make this comment huge, so I’ll leave it at this: I love both FB and Twitter.
I don’t think if I was a teen I’d tweet either. I would probably be one who signed up and tweeted once then forgot my sign in info or not be interersted in it very much. Heh.
The part about ‘why people think their friends Tweet’.
I don’t think they get the idea. I mean people like me utilise Twitter to get news, post updates for my website/website exposure, check out trending topics and keep in touch with friends who don’t use Facebook.
“…it is no surprise that teen penetration is not higher.”
LOL I was wondering the same thing – who uses these two words in a sentence? Oh.
I wonder, which ridiculous stupid imbecile came up with this bizarre drag to share “feature”.
I’m part of the smallest demographic. I’ll be 63 this month. For the longest time, I looked at Twitter as a waste of time. I’ve spent my entire career in high-tech and have been an ardent fan of the internet and everything it brings (good and bad).
I never really dealt with MySpace, even though I did open an account just to check it out. Same with Facebook, but then Facebook began to take on a really fun aspect, that of finding friends from years ago. 3 days ago an old acquaintance “Friended” me – somewhat to my surprise. Then yesterday, a friend of his who I haven’t heard from literally in 10 years reached out to me from Israel. That’s the power of Facebook.
Twitter, on the other hand, didn’t offer any such obvious benefit, and I resisted until I started my own yacht brokerage business totally apart from my high-tech days. I then found Twitter to be an AWESOME way for me to learn about my industry, as well as communicate back out – the back out part will take a little more time. The discovery of TinyURL made me understand even more how Twitter is a greater reference tool than Facebook – but obviously I could do the same – it’s just not as current. Nor as easy.
So, Facebook for friends and family, Twitter for current reference, news and business.
I suspect that Teens haven’t figured out (generalizing here guys), that TinyURL (or Bit) is a great tool for sending volumes of great information to a large number of people. 140 characters? Not an issue.
Twitter also works if you want to follow some famous idol – if you’re into that, and I suspect a number of Teens use that – but that doesn’t interest me.
I expect Twitter to continue to grow – even among teens – I’m amazed at how many people actually use it to disseminate information. Either that, or someone will finally figure out how to mash all the sites together into one supersite.
Can’t wait for that technological advancement.
> I’m part of the smallest demographic. I’ll be 63 this month.
My instant thought was “oh god, another self proclaimed “social media expert” twat” because 99% of people over 40 that use twitter are, apparently, one of these. Thankfully you aren’t!
I’m 16 and have been Twittering since I was 15.
It’s a very useful tool for keeping up with friends to arrange days out because it’s more direct than that of E-Mail. Talking to colleges is more efficient because of that reason too.
There’ also the fun side of it being that it’s good just to have a chat, check out the trending topics and see what people are talking/thinking about in real time.
However a lot of my friends don’t use it because they think it’s pointless, when really if they gave it a chance they might love it.
Steven Knight.
I’m 18 and I religiously update my twitter status
I’m a teen (15) and I have a Twitter account. I never send tweets, and I only follow celebrities, and people I want to hear from. No one I know uses Twitter. From our eyes, the whole thing is kind of stupid and pointless if you send tweets. If you’re well known, then it would make sence to communicate with your fans through Twitter, I suppose.
I’m a teen and I tweet. But mainly for my YouTube subscribers who also like to check in on what I’m doing. I have almost 600 followers as of now and I’m addicted to Tweeting.
The teens in Brazil won’t stop tweeting to tell their favorite, often times American, celebrity that they love them. I recently analyzed a measly 40 tweets and found 28 to be teens in the category mentioned.
Should we be saying “Teens in the Western world don’t tweet”?
Well, if this is the case, then we’d better analyse teen tweets by country. I wonder where British teens were to be found in such case. As a matter of fact, there was that report from a 15 y.o. intern who claimed that Twitter is of no interest to kids in England. But even adults here are not on the ball. I am most surprised when those adults also create and promote websites. Doesn’t make sense to me.
This is fascinating, and is an opportunity to talk about our responses to various test questions.
@Patricia – I am writing from the UK, and here the travel operators were recently urged to direct their advertising at children. The logic is, of course, that a child sees an ad for Disney Park in Florida and gets to roll on the floor crying until his parents buy a holiday with Mickey Mouse. The same logic, I suspect, is in the case with teens. Their parents, if they tweet, are busy doing their own business, so a marketer’s chance at getting the busy parent to buy a product is slim. Another thing is when the parents’ teenage son or daughter is on Twitter…
Just last night I was looking at the top trending topics on Twitter : #thankyouJB . Tweets dedicated to the Jonas Brothers, popular with Tweens.
Maybe we should think Twice about this.
I use twitter cause i can keep up with my friends from around the world. And to see what celebrities have to say. It IS quite simalar to facebook but more simple, but i like that. I update my twitter probibly at least 3 times a day and i dont even have that many followers.
Interesting article – perhaps they are lurkers and don’t tweet.
However one other key aspect that should be looked at is the fact that the communication is not in real times as with applications like instant messenger and you do not know who is online – unless someone replies. Tweeter is not really dialogue as you may not be online when the comment(s) are made and commenting on it after the event means that it may not make sense as there may have been other updates.
The other issue is the fact that some people do not grow out of the inital inane comments ie having coffee, looking out the window at the sea/sky etc so why would teens want to pay to read such drivel.
I think that the teen issue is more related to how they use texting. They text people in their family and close friends. In that regard, tweeting is redundant and, ew, if you don’t protect your updates, other people can see them!
I have a couple of my teen nieces following me on Twitter and they use it to follow celebs, occasionally tweet “I’m bored” or surprise me and respond to something I tweet.
But I’ve seen a lot of teens on YouTube and they are creating scads of content and using it to express themselves. Great for them and just what marketers and web site companies like – CONTENT.
I’m 17 and I tweet a lot. But the reason I got a twitter in the first place was because I have subscribers on youtube. The people who I follow/follow me are not my friends in real life, they are people I know online and people who watch my videos.
If I didn’t have a youtube, I probably would have never made a twitter. I won’t use it to connect with my real friends, that’s what facebook is for. I feel it is safer to use twitter with online friends, because you do not have to reveal your full name.
My response is simply, “So what?” Can there be some things in cyberspace for adults to do or does everything have to be geared towards teens, pre-teens, tweens and other sub-divisions? Perhaps teens don’t do it but I don’t see how that translates into their behavior in a few short years when they are adults. Perhaps they’ll find that Twitter (or its successor) has a use in their profession or just to stay connected to friends and college contacts.
If Teen’s don’t Tweet, then why is #thankyouJB , Tweets about the Tween-popular Jonas Brothers a Top Trending Topic on Twitter right now?
i use twitter because I CAN’T HAVE A FACEBOOK! and its NOT lame. It helps me keep up with my friends
I think Twitter’s value comes more from forming the new connections than the ongoing “in life” flow (though that’s still big). As I said here http://bit.ly/iqugL:
So it’s not that Twitter is the be-all-end-all tool. It’s just that it is the constantly in motion “front line” of where your business (or your individual) interests can connect with other relevant people in the world who you are not yet connected to.