You’ve probably read the headlines over the past month stating that teens don’t use Twitter. If not, go here, there are dozens of stories about it, including no less than two TechCrunch posts. What I’m wondering today is if that’s the case, why is there all this fuss over Miley Cyrus quitting Twitter?
Okay, yes, it’s possible that there are plenty of — how do I put this…perverted — gentlemen out there begging for her to come back. And undoubtedly seeing as #mileycomeback has been the top trending topic all day on Twitter, the spam bots are out there latching on to the trend. But still, I’ve seen the story like a dozen times today all over the web. Reuters has it, the AP has it, the Wall Street Journal has it, the Telegraph has it. Then of course, the entertainment press: MTV, Entertainment Weekly, Extra, etc. And I saw it on CNN earlier. Why does anyone care if teens, Cyrus’ audience, aren’t using Twitter?
Looking over the #mileycomeback results, most tweets (and there are a truly massive amount), do appear to actually be from real teens tweeting about it. Many are asking her father (yes, former Mr. Mullet, Billy Ray Cyrus) to persuade her to come back, others are just mad that she quit her nearly 2 million followers. But most do appear to be real people, and yes, most appear to be teens.
So maybe teens don’t use Twitter except when Miley Cyrus quits, to get her to come back to a service they don’t use? Or maybe the idea that teens don’t use Twitter is simply not true. I kind of wish it were true at this point, so I could stop hearing about Miley Cyrus.
Going back to the entertainment press, I’m a little concerned about them encroaching our beat. Normally, its the tech press that gets to bitch about Twitter being down (like this morning) and come up with conspiracy theories as to why that’s the case. But now outlets like Extra are getting on board. “Did Miley Break Twitter?,” they ask. No real evidence to support that — other than, Kirstie Alley not tweeting for over 16 hours? What?
It has come to this.
