Twitter Isn’t for Normal People

For the Internet community, Twitter has become the standard tool to share information about our near instantaneous industry.  It is the newest app that we have taken on to beta test its potential to cross-over into the mainstream.

I can comfortably ask anyone at a tech event what their Twitter name is without having to worry if they have an account. I often use this as a yardstick for adoption. When you can make a similar assumption with normal people, like you can with E-mail, Aim, and Facebook, you have a smash hit.

This is why getting normal people to adopt Twitter will be difficult:

1. “Following” is what creepy stalkers do. Normal people don’t follow, they have friends.

2. The concept of  online social capital is meaningless to them.  They don’t care about their online presence because nobody in their industry or social-circle cares.  Their only concern is that embarrassing pictures don’t show up when they are Googled.  A massive shift in perspective needs to occur before regular people start to adopt tools that can help them cultivate that online identity as opposed to hiding it.  We have an incentive to raise our online social capital, which is something the mass-market doesn’t understand or care about.

3.  Normal people don’t want you to know “what they’re doing”.  Talk to any attractive girl and she’ll tell you about one or two guys that can’t take a hint. They don’t want that person to be able to follow them and they don’t want to tell that person what they’re doing.

4.  Getting people a regular person to use Twitter literally requires force.  If it wasn’t for the web-community forcing their non-tech friends to use it, I don’t think it would be growing as fast as it is.  In fact, Nate Westheimer and Justine Ezarik forced me to use it at SXSW because I thought it was pointless.  Honestly, I agreed because I thought Justine was cute and was shocked that an Internet app had attracted what appeared to be a normal girl to use it. (I didn’t know she was a video blogger at the time).   This type of evnagilism is a testimate to the service and community that Twitter built, but it’s only a sustainable strategy for growth if it can cross-over to regular people, and not just from geek to geek.

Posted on September 27th, 2008 at 15:36 by Jason Schwartz in Normal People, Twitter

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  • Hey I could agree to all the four points you have written here, I use twitter and I am proud to admit that I am not a normal guy! LOL.Soğutma Büyüsü
  • I think the more context that Twitter takes on, like in your election example, the more people will be able to wrap their heads around what Twitter is.
  • Thanks for the post, I liked reading it. keep posts like this coming.
  • You’re right. There is a lot of affiliate networking sites so achievieng some kind of success that can give back money is a difficult task. I don’t know is this free offer can be enough to get people attention?
  • That is an excellent insight you made, and one that I completely missed in regards to the potential for Twitter.
  • Twitter is NOT a special technology, meaning it could never threaten to steal market share from the "semi-private broadcast" space, even if it did enter into it.
  • I agree that normal people are interested in contributing to a collective pool of data if the results of that data are useful to them.
  • sammiha
    an excellent insight you made, and one that I completely missed in regards to the potential for Twitter.
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  • sammiha
    I think the more context that Twitter takes on, like in your election example, the more people will be able to wrap their heads around what Twitter is.
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  • sammiha
    Twitter is NOT a special technology, meaning it could never threaten to steal market share from the "semi-private broadcast" space, even if it did enter into it.
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  • You make the 'people want privacy' point - but to drive it home - if normal people wanted to communicate even semi-privately, they would do it on their entrenched social networks or in chat rooms. Twitter is NOT a special technology, meaning it could never threaten to steal market share from the "semi-private broadcast" space, even if it did enter into it. No matter what happens, market penetration will be limited by the fact that an average person just doesn't get much value add from communicating through public broadcast.
  • Honestly, I agreed because I thought Justine was cute and was shocked that an Internet app had attracted what appeared to be a normal girl to use it. (I didn’t know she was a video blogger at the time).
  • I subscribed to your blog when is the next post

    Thanks
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  • Twitter is like a tsunami of Social networking... it has generated a huge wave of curiosity amon web enthusiasts but will die slowly as it won't reach masses
  • I think normal people are starting to catch on to the concept, even kids have Twitter pages nowadays
  • Dogfence
    You are right, even my 12 years old brother is using twitter and has 100 followers!
  • I was thinking of Twitter purely from the public communication/self promotion tool. That is an excellent insight you made, and one that I completely missed in regards to the potential for Twitter.

    CheeRxx..
  • It's fun to meet a lot of people. You will learn a lot of ideas in social networks like twitter.
  • the main concept of twitter was, "to say something in hopes that someone would listen to you".. you are totally right about this article.
  • Twitter is a breeding ground for spammers, hackers and lurkers. You might be very careful not to get your account hack orelse it could be very embarrassing or could get you into trouble.
  • Honestly, I agreed because I thought Justine was cute and was shocked that an Internet app had attracted what appeared to be a normal girl to use it. (I didn’t know she was a video blogger at the time).

    Thanks and Regards
  • Twitter is a breeding ground for spammers, hackers and lurkers. You might be very careful not to get your account hack orelse it could be very embarrassing or could get you into trouble.
  • I totally agree with you, twitter is indeed not for normal people, i have observed it a lot of times!
  • It's absolutely is for everyone what I feel!
  • Twitter is FUN and i like it :D
  • Hey I could agree to all the four points you have written here, I use twitter and I am proud to admit that I am not a normal guy! LOL.
  • Jason, nice meeting you at Sixth Ward. I loved this post. Thought I would pass along my post on Twitter:

    http://www.michaelmuse.com/2008/10/open-letter-to-twitter-historically-i.html
  • Michael, I really enjoyed reading your post. I agree that normal people are interested in contributing to a collective pool of data if the results of that data are useful to them. The example you gave of Joe Internet participating in a sports poll on ESPN is perfect.

    I was thinking of Twitter purely from the public communication/self promotion tool. That is an excellent insight you made, and one that I completely missed in regards to the potential for Twitter.
  • Awesome post. I have been trying to make this argument on the comment boards in various stories shared in the twitter group on social|median [http://www.socialmedian.com/network/twitter], but I think for some twitter geeks it is just a concept that is too hard to grasp. If I may - one point you missed that I think is pretty important:
    You make the 'people want privacy' point - but to drive it home - if normal people wanted to communicate even semi-privately, they would do it on their entrenched social networks or in chat rooms. Twitter is NOT a special technology, meaning it could never threaten to steal market share from the "semi-private broadcast" space, even if it did enter into it. No matter what happens, market penetration will be limited by the fact that an average person just doesn't get much value add from communicating through public broadcast.
  • Couldn't agree more with this assessment. Perhaps instead of trying to get Twitter to become used by non-techies (which may never happen), they should focus on making the data currently being generated more useful to non-twitter users. http://election.twitter.com is one example but not a great one.
  • It is interesting that Twitter has a completely unstructured format, and the users set about structuring it with @, #, and now $. I think the more context that Twitter takes on, like in your election example, the more people will be able to wrap their heads around what Twitter is.
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