Would it surprise you that 54% of 4.5 million Twitter users in the HubSpot Grader database never sent a status update? Or, that 55% do not follow anyone and 52% have no followers?
HubSpot released its 2nd annual State of the Twittersphere (PDF) last week.
Dave Fleet suggests robots and inactive users may account for the declining statistics. This is explained by feeds like @CNN which broadcast regardless of followers, and brands like @Budweiser and @Microsoft which own accounts but don’t use them.
Twitter still isn’t a silver bullet solution to your problems. Neither is social media as a whole. They may be an important part of your toolkit, but they cannot operate in isolation.
Switch to Jay Baer, arguing Twitter is not user-friendly from the standpoint of a new person creating an account.
Nobody welcomes you. Nobody encourages you. You’re left to figure it out for yourself, using a woefully inadequate search tool, a bunch of abbreviations and lingo you don’t know, and a staccato communication style that values brevity over clarity.
The initial sign on and get rolling process on Facebook and Linkedin seems positively red carpet by comparison. You can reliably find people based on their real name. You can find people based on location. Or company. People are actually recommended to you based on your mutual interests.
I agree with Jay all the way.
With a Twitter for Dummies book arriving at your local bookshop in July, let’s hope co-authors Laura Fitton, Michael Gruen, and Leslie Poston include plenty of hand-holding advice and screen shots to guide the new user through the faults indicated by Dave and Jay.
I’m guessing a book may be more immediate than redesigning the twitter.com interface. In the meantime, have you seen John Haydon’s guide to 40+ Twitter resources?
Photo credit: Donna Grayson
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Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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You raise a good point Ari. How many of us who now use Twitter all the time signed up, stopped using it and then started again a couple of months later when it all started to make sense. I really try to follow back new people who aren’t spammers even if we might not end up connecting because I remember how happy I was when someone actually followed me back.
Twitter definitely has on-ramp issues, and yes, the book addresses them fully, taking 288 pages to fully dissect the 140 character service from both a personal and business standpoint
288 pages?!?
This makes perfect sense to me. When I joined Twitter sometime in 2007 I’d already been active on other communities such as Flickr and the now defunct Pownce. Frankly I was such a Pownce fan that I put off joining Twitter for quite awhile. I finally caved in because so many were using it that I felt I should get to know it better.
On Pownce we could list our other account profiles on our Pownce pages so it was easy for me to follow my Pownce friends on their Twitter accounts. Thus I could start tweeting with people I already knew and was already familiar with using the @ for referencing users because Twitter was often discussed on Pownce. So I had a bit of a head start.
But I also found it frustrating. Pownce had threaded discussions. On Twitter if can be challenging to follow a conversation back to the beginning. (Though hashtags help under the right circumstances). The 140 character limit was also a stumbling point. Used to being able to wax forth endlessly, I found it challenging to become more succinct, while making a point and sharing a link. Then of course there are the crowds. Even if you only follow 50 people it’s hard to follow it all.
It wasn’t until Pownce died and I found Tweetdeck that I really started Tweeting on a daily basis. By that time the number of people I followed had grown significantly, but Tweetdeck let’s me put people into groups so I can keep track of those I want to follow most closely.
I now find Twitter to be very useful (though I still miss the more robust features of Pownce) but it took me awhile to get into the Tweeting habit. Mostly I did so because people I knew in the higher education Web community were using it to connect on a regular basis. So I really started using it more for the people than the service itself.
Given that it took me awhile to get into Twitter even though I was already familiar with social media, I can imagine that it’s an utter mystery to those who are new to the media as a whole. Books and Web sites can help, but in the end perhaps it is up to those of us who tweet regularly to guide our friends and other newbies into the fold.
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Your last sentence is sensical only if the new person is a friend. What if someone joins — because Oprah praises it? What then?
Hi Ari,
Long time no chat.
Funny I found this post today. When I joined, at the recommendation of Barbara Boser, over 2 years ago – I simply didn’t use it because there was no help, “no welcomes” from fellow Tweeters, etc.
But about a year ago I bought an iPod Touch (Wifi included) and started Tweeting a lot more. Then came the BB Storm and I’m Tweeting like mad, lol. Yet I still have only 105 followers and only follow 37 people (as of today-right now).
Kind of an odd little gadget Twitter is…
P.S. If you are seriously running for that seat, best of luck to you!
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When you read that Twitter has more than 10,000 third-party apps, no wonder it’s overwhelming – what are these things??
I think Twitter’s main problem is that Ev and Biz have made it too simple. They’ve basically given us a sandpit and said, “Okay, children, go play.”
But we don’t know anyone and we don’t know the good toys to play with – what kind of crappy sandpit is this?
Once you get past that then, yes, Twitter is phenomenal. But it’s a steep learning curve and people generally don’t like steep anythings.
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I’m all for an idiot’s guide to Twitter book. Twitter just doesn’t come easy.
What I’d love more is a Twitter ambassador program, even if it’s volunteers.
Another idea is to make it easy for me to invite folks I know and have our accounts automatically hooked up and then easier still to make friend recommendations.
Heck, maybe I’ll start a program myself.
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