Sign up

Be a part of one now.

Conversations. Discuss what you love. In real-time.

. View all
Mark Suster started a conversation 1 year ago
Do you think the meme that youth aren't on Twitter is accurate? If yes, why are they not on? What are they looking for? Do they use alternate networks? What would it take to capture them?
Summarize the best points of this conversation. Click here to create a conversation summary.
  • 0 votes
    @Mark Suster don't suppose you have any demos to look at?
    Clint Ivy  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Clint  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    @clint
    Mark Suster  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Mark  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    Twitter is used mostly for broadcasting and today's youth use YouTube to broadcast so why use Twitter?
    Chris Tucker Stewart  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Chris  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    @Clint Ivy what do you mean "demos to look at?"
    Mark Suster  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Mark  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    @Chris Tucker Stewart I know that's the "conventional wisdom" but it doesn't ring true. What evidence do you have? I don't think Twitter is broadcast. I observe many convesations
    Mark Suster  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Mark  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    I don't think the meme is accurate (Twitter is used at least as a curation tool) but I do think "youth" have a preference for real time chats and texts. Mostly for privacy and control.
    Mike Puangmalai  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Mike  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    @Mark Suster demographic breakdowns of twitter traffic
    Clint Ivy  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Clint  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    @Mark Suster Only evidence is what my teenage sister and her friends have told me when I've asked in the past. They don't feel the need to go find important people to follow on Twitter when all of their friends are on Facebook/YouTube.
    Chris Tucker Stewart  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Chris  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    @Mark Suster They can "like" their favorite celebrities on FB now and get updates that way without having to join another service.
    Chris Tucker Stewart  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Chris  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    @Mark Suster it's much harder to have a conversation on twitter than say here, or over SMS
    Clint Ivy  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Clint  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    If you were 12-17 why would you use Twitter?
    Chris Dumler  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Chris  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    what i find most interesting is clicking on global trending topics and looking at a handful of folks responding. Not only do I not know any of them, most of them are not in tech, and many of them are young (at least guessing from their profiles). I would imagine that Twitter is used by the young a lot more than we believe.
    Micah Baldwin  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Micah  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    All I can say is that Justin Bieber doesn't represent 2% of all tweets because of people over 17. They are there.... they're just not talking to us. Same with the late night hashtag parties (#uknowurghettoif)
    Joel Andren  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Joel  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    I agree with @Joel Andren . This is only anecdotal, but I personally know a number of teens on Twitter. Most of them have their accounts set to Private. They use it to chat with each other and follow a few celebrity (e.g. Bieber) and/or brand accounts that interest them. They seems to prefer the threaded conversations on Facebook, though. :)
    Arlene Wszalek  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Arlene  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    Our of all the networks i'm on... I find kids are mostly on these ones: Dailybooth, Facebook, Youtube, and Tumblr.... lots and lots of Tumblr. haha
    Vanessa Tam  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Vanessa  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    I've seen the data, they're not on it, their #1 reason is that they don't get sharing with the net, they want pier conversations. Now if only someone would build something like that :P
    Tyler Crowley  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Tyler  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    Is this a recent meme, or has it survived from the much-discussed report prepared in '09 by a 15-year-old British Morgan Stanley intern: http://asm.ly/6k ? MyYearbook founder Geoff Cook took a hard look at the premise and came up with some great insights in a Techcrunch post: http://asm.ly/6l .
    Would love to see some more current numbers, @Tyler Crowley .
    We've found that teens will use Twitter vigorously to interact with entertainment properties.
    Josh McHugh  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Josh  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    I think the key issues is that for teens the mutual friendship is the most important thing, so Twitter's general "broadcast" system isn't ideal for them. However, I think this can continue over time as more celebrities that kids are interested in being closer to continue to use Twitter more.
    Pat McCarthy  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Pat  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    Yes, I believe for the most part that meme is accurate. This is primarily because Twitter doesn't have the same engagement flow as Facebook for people with weak "external" contact systems. For example, most teens aren't in the tech or entertainment sector, so how many of them are willing to follow random people. Most of them wouldn't answer a question or reply to a tweet from a VC that they have never met (yet writes an excellent blog). Yet
    Spencer Thompson  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Spencer  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    The level of "strong" ties is not present in any current social network but Facebook. So any other platform they use does not require 1-1 interactions like Twitter. This is why almost all teens are on Youtube and Hotmail. The herd effect takes over. Twitter's psychology is way off for the teen demographic - and that's okay.
    Spencer Thompson  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Spencer  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    Completely agree with the "broadcast" view. Compare and contrast with MySpace in its heyday. Yes, MS pages were open to the whole world (although later we made them private for younger users), but nobody viewed it as a broadcast medium because 90% of what they did on there was communicate and share things with their friends, or friends' friends. Facebook later took over as the primary day-to-day communications tool for groups of friends (and SMS + IM for 1-on-1 communications).

    Yes, many teens are narcissists with an exhibitionist streak, who want to create an online persona that's larger-than-life and put it on display for their peers -- but they don't want the whole world watching it. Once Mom or teachers or other adults join the audience, it becomes a buzzkill.
    Antone Johnson  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Antone  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    Picking up on @Spencer Thompson 's point, the strongest ties for young people are closely correlated with geography. (Friends at the same high school/neighboring schools/same college.) Twitter is the radical opposite of that -- worldwide and instantaneous. Seems like a mismatch. If I had to place bets, I'd say the killer app would be location-based (or at least location-aware), ideally something that empowers people to slice-and-dice in various ways to choose what portions of their peer group they want to broadcast to.
    Antone Johnson  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Antone  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    Example: at a concert with thousands of people, iPhone app scours your Facebook friends to see if any of them are at the same show (or friends' friends to expand your circle), opens up a "chat channel" for all of you to chatter about the show, share photos or video clips, coordinate to meet up in person or go out afterwards, etc. Foursquare is a blunt instrument but it's a step in that direction. The whole "shout" feature is interesting but not conducive to having real conversations.
    Antone Johnson  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Antone  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    The other major problem with Twitter is that it's binary: You're either following/followed or not. Ideally, youth should have a way to stratify their social graph so that they can tailor the nature of their communications accordingly (from BFF's to friends to "cool peeps they kinda know" to classmates whose names they've heard but don't really know... you get the idea). I've never seen any social site or service do this effectively. I think Namesake is on to something with the option to have either public or invite-only conversations. (Are you listening, @Brian Norgard ?)
    Antone Johnson  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Antone  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    @Antone Johnson I am sir. Let me offer a few opinions on this subject.

    It's dangerous to draw hardcore generalizations when you're looking at a system the size of Twitter (200MM users).

    First I am going to point to this Pew research study: Pew Internet Social Media and Young Adults http://bit.ly/9lyTrk

    Second I am going to point to a few anecdotal findings:

    -young adults love profiles and Twitter is void of such a feature (which is to their advantage in certain cases)
    Brian Norgard  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Brian  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    Continued...

    -Facebook's dominant feature (photo sharing) is uncontested on Twitter
    -As mentioned above teens are heavily invested in peer focused conversation (Facebook)
    -Facebook's true one-2-one real-time chat is uncontested on Twitter
    -Facebook event are a powerful distribution hook and is uncontested in Twitter

    I've always seen Twitter as a broadcast tool. Young adults aren't in the selling or brand building phases of their lives and thus might not see the amazing utility of Twitter as a connection system.

    Last but not least, Facebook simply dominates mind share. Spend an hour in a high school or walk down a dorm room hall at night and you'll be astonished by how many people are addicted to the environment.
    Brian Norgard  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Brian  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    I have no hard data to go on other than cousins who are teenagers or college students that update Facebook hourly but aren't on Twitter. From my conversations with them, a couple observations:
    - As many pointed out, the sharing piece isn't as powerful as facebook, no reason to use it
    - Teens don't care about Twitter as a discovery service. Many find twitter useful simply as a content discovery service (links to Techcrunch articles etc.), but most teens don't care to keep up with the news, just news about friends
    - SMS is their closed-network version of twitter
    Mike Su  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Mike  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    it's also possible they are simple segmented, twitter is more like multiple social networks/graphs in one unless you couldn't something like the #oscars, and unless you search/follow that you won't see people you don't follow.
    Timothy Meade  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Timothy  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    I just ran a Facebook a/b/c ad test. 97%+ of conversions to Cull's (my online video product) closed beta were from the 13-17 demographic. I was stunned, but then again, I wasn't.
    Katherine de Leon  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Katherine  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    @Katherine de Leon Thanks for sharing that data with us.
    Brian Norgard  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Brian  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    @Katherine de Leon very interesting
    Spencer Thompson  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Spencer  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    True value of Twitter is it allows asymmetric relationships to form, i.e. I'm a peon entrepreneur yet I get one way conversation from Suster. For teens, they have no need for asymmetric relationships. Yes, they like celebs, but there are better means to learn about celebs than from Twitter.

    Good news for Twitter, that I think there is a good chance that as the cohort transitions from teens to college to young professionals that they will use Twitter. Understanding cohort effects is as important as understanding a static segment - one should do both.
    David K Park  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention David  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    It takes a wide-sweeping, comprehensive, 'big world' understanding of the Internet to get Twitter's purpose, I think. Mainly, due to it's lack of direct structure, and seemingly only single feature (status updates), it doesn't seem useful to someone who wants to engage with their bubble in a confined and defined space. MySpace and Facebook define the spaces in messaging, comments, wall posts, etc etc. Also they have photo-sharing, Facebook has chat. It looks like you can communicate more on a site that has "more" features. To us old-timers, perhaps we've seen it all already, and the ease of use & speed of communication is just what the doctor ordered for our short, need-it-yesterday attitudes. Kids have patience, they like complex environments (Facebook), not complex abstracts (Twitter).
    Enrique Gutierrez  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Enrique  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    Because younger people adapt faster, and they have already realized that Twitter is very inefficient for what it does. It was built to be a status-sharing tool (but Facebook does that better), so the Twitter community hacked the platform with shortcuts (@, RT, #, etc) to make it into something more useful.

    But what it has become (a news network) gets less efficient as more people join because Twitter is too scared to pivot at this point to embrace it's new purpose. It just keeps adding features, raising complexity faster than value.

    So, as we adults try to tweak and refine our lists and follows to make our decision to use the platform sensible since we're so invested (cognitive dissonance), while the youth just discard and move on. Plus... if you remember back to when you were a kid/teen, did you value news and information? Probably not. Kids care about friends and media more, and Twitter doesn't provide those.
    Cody Riddar  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Cody  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    Interesting that this was revived today, as this was a topic of conversation in a pitch we heard less than an hour ago. I'm interested in hearing whether/how opinions on this have changed over the past five months.
    Heather Gilchrist  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Heather  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    @Heather Gilchrist I wasn't signed in when I came to the website, and this convo was streaming across the landing page. So I was effectively baited ;)
    Cody Riddar  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Cody  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    @Cody Riddar Interesting points. What do you think they could do to filter the signal to noise ratio better? What should they pivot to become? I'm still curious as to what the ultimate communication tool will be. I think we're getting closer but I think that there is still a lot of friction in most mediums. How do you make it seamless? How do you make it magic?
    Erick Cloward  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Erick  •  +1
  • 0 votes
    @Erick Cloward I don't think there's such a thing as the ultimate communication tool. Not only do different platforms fit different situations, but also different relationships. I talk about this in detail here if you're interested: http://blog.poun...-feature . The summary of it is - that every successful social network has a real life counterpart - except Twitter. That's why I think they're doomed without a pivot.

    As for what Twitter should pivot to become, I think that's PoundWire. And I'm not saying that because I'm trying to push a service I built. I built PoundWire because a year ago I wrote a blog post about "How could Twitter be better" and just decided to build it instead. But it hasn't found an audience, so I hope Twitter adopts PoundWire's model - and they are actually starting too. They've implemented three of my features in the last four weeks.

    Twitter needs to put information above the social connections, because interest should supersede discovery; although both are important. Before I follow you on Twitter, I should be able to see the topics you tweet about, and some sign from the community on credibility. Then, once I follow you, I should be able to exclude some of the topics I don't care about. I took the short route with PoundWire by requiring you tag every post so I could relate you with your expertise, and show the community. But for Twitter, a shorter route might be to acquire and integrate Klout with your Twitter profile.
    Cody Riddar  •  Punt  •  Delete Comment  •  Mention Cody  •  +1
  • What do you think?

Company

Created by

ns-prod-frontend, production, master:761 ping