I like Twitter, but it has a big problem
Really, I’m sure that Twitter has more than a single problem – most companies/concepts/new technologies do. But I think that the main issue with Twitter is that it will never gain mainstream adoption until there is an easier way to get new people understanding and using the technology – a quick and easy way.
Here are the issues that I think make Twitter so difficult to start using:
1) It’s hard to explain. I have been in a number of business meetings in the past month where the topic of Twitter came up. In one meeting (about social media) the person doing the presentation hadn’t heard of Twitter and everyone in the room looked at me like I had two heads when I brought it up. In another meeting, the president of a content creation company told me that his company “Looked into Twitter, didn’t get it, and figured that it would never have mainstream adoption.” I tried to tell these people why they should care about Twitter, why people telling each other “what they’re doing” in 140 characters or less was important, but they just didn’t get it. And I’m sure that was my fault because I did a terrible job explaining. There MUST be a better way to explain. I think this video was awesome and helpful, but what about when I don’t have a video handy?
2) There is no “key selling proposition.” Lovers of Twitter will tell me that I am crazy, that Twitter is so great because it does so many things for so many people. But I would tell you that to get mainstream adoption, it needs a key selling proposition. How do I get people to use Facebook? I tell them that it’s a low-key way to connect with friends I’ve lost touch with (and I give examples). How do I get people to use Tumblr? I explain how I can link to things and pictures and stories and all the stuff that I find interesting on the Web and that I can set it up in about 1 minute.
I don’t have ONE good way to get people to start using Twitter. Some people say that they get immediate and great input on restaurants when they are traveling. 
Others say that they use it when they’re lost or to get answers to questions. But I haven’t effectively used Twitter in any of those ways (although I’ve tried). I am not sure if that is because you have to have a certain number of people following you, a certain level of celebrity within the group that is following you, or if you actually need to know the people in your Twitter network, but those uses clearly don’t work for everyone. I am left without a great way to convince everyone that I know that they should use Twitter (and people I know using Twitter would be the one way that the service would actually begin to be extremely useful to me).
3) People sign up and then leave. This almost happened to me. I started using Twitter, had a bad experience, left, came back and managed to stick with it (although I’m hardly a Twitter power-user.) Here’s my embarrassing story:
I started using Twitter on October 18, 2007, with this Tweet: “Joining twitter, trying to figure out how it works”
My fourth Tweet was this: “There’s never been a better time to do a startup http://www.scribemedia.org/…” Followed quickly by my fifth Tweet: “I should get a tatoo”
Of course, I meant for my fifth post to be connected to the fourth post, but I got tripped up by the 140 character limit. So I quickly went in to try to delete the fifth post and couldn’t – there’s no delete. So then I was horrified because I was trying to establish my professional Internet presence and not only did my Tweet say “I should get a tatoo” but I didn’t even spell tattoo correctly. I quickly made a couple of other posts in hopes of covering up the embarrassing post, and then bailed.
I came back again on January 4, 2008, with this message: “Trying Twitter again. I wish I could get into it.”
My next Tweet: “about to throw twitter out the window. just tried to send a direct message, dont think it worked. grrrr ”
Thank God for @tylerwillis who quickly replied “it worked if it was the one to me.” He might have saved my Twitter life. I kept going.
Everyone was writing about Twitter. I knew that I had to figure out how to use it, but I was struggling. I personally knew only one person who used Twitter. My friends (mostly non-techies) and business colleagues (behind in Web 2.0) weren’t using it. So I started “following” people, just in an attempt to see how Twitter worked. I currently follow 585 people, most of whom I started following on January 4th or 5th.
Then I started getting input from people about how I shouldn’t follow so many people and how I was incorrectly using Twitter. This is a gem that I received that day (via email):
“Saw you follow me on twitter, and you seem really interesting but.. can I respectfully refer you to this document http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/twitter-guide/ . ( i.e #3). Sorry just telling it like it is
I had no idea what this guy (who I didn’t know) was talking about. I went to the link and this is what the link said:
Twitter Guide Part #3: Using Twitter Properly
So I figured that I made a mistake, that I broke some “Twitetiquette” but I had no idea what. So I wrote my new email buddy back to ask what my issue was. This is what he told me in reply:
“I know from your blogs that you are a top person. intelligent and info source. When I looked at your twitter follow I checked it out and simply you were not someone I would want to follow. … Bottom line, would you want to read and follow your own twitter posts? Maybe you would? …
With twitter you get flooded with feeds and if feeds are pointless crap, then people don’t have the time to follow them, unless they already know and are interested in the pointless crap of that person….
I can only tell you that when I looked at your twitters, you offered me “nothing” of interest.”
OUCH. I was a brand-new Twitter user being shown the door for writing “pointless crap” on Twitter.
I clearly am someone of outstanding stubbornness (or stupidity) because I stuck with Twitter. And I still use it, although not as much as some people. But I have a feeling that this experience that I had, this barrier to entry that was almost impossible to overcome, is probably holding people back from adoption.
When I went through the phase (lasting 2 days) of trying to add a lot of people at once, I had some strategies. One of those was to add all the people named “Melissa.” I typed the name into the search box and found that most people named Melissa have quit on Twitter after joining. Here’s the “Recently” timeframes of the first 19 Melissa’s that show up:
2 days ago
about 1 year ago
7 months ago
11 months ago
about 1 year ago
about 1 year ago
protected
3 months ago
15 hours ago
11 months ago
protected
9 months ago
10 months ago
protected
21 days ago
9 months ago
9 months ago
4 months ago
13 hours ago
If I consider “current” Twitter users as anyone who has sent a message in the past month, and I eliminate the Melissa’s who have protected updates, only 3 out of 16 (19%) are still current users of Twitter. I thought this might be an issue between female/male users of Twitter, so I did the same thing with my husband’s name (Christopher). I found this:
about 1 year ago
5 months ago
3 days ago
8 months ago
10 months ago
19 days ago
protected
2 days ago
20 days ago
about 1 year ago
7 months ago
2 hours ago
about 1 year ago
protected
about 1 year ago
11 months ago
10 months ago
10 months ago
protected
The results were a little better – 5 out of 16 (31%) were recent Twitter users. But in my unscientific study, there is clearly a huge drop off from the number of people who sign up to Twitter compared to the number of people who continue to use the service.
4) The people who don’t use Twitter don’t understand the language of it. Anyone who reads this post who doesn’t use Twitter will not know the following terms and what they mean to Twitter or how to use them:
@mchang16 (the @ symbol is the biggest because it’s all over Twitter, and not intuitive)
Follow
Tweet
Twitetiquette
Recently
Something needs to be done to make it easier to get people to use Twitter, and to get them to stick around to learn how to use (and keep using) it after signing up. If that doesn’t happen, there will be no widespread future for the service.
Follow me on Twitter (if you dare!) @mchang16.
(As a footnote to this story, my email buddy and I became Facebook friends, although he still doesn’t follow me on Twitter.)
Tags: Chris, Facebook, Social media, Tumblr, Twitter
I think Twitter as a company is working to address these issues, given what ev has been talking about publicly recently.
I’m glad you stuck with it.
-Tyler
@fourlittlebees on Twitter here.
I’m growing quickly tired of the “rules” of Twitter. As long as you don’t spam the stream, I couldn’t care less about TFF ratios and “proper use.”
As for explaining it to people, I use an egg analogy. IM is an egg in its shell. Everyone know the yolk, etc. is in there, but they can’t share it until it’s cracked open. IM is a closed protocol. You have to know the person’s ID, find the person, and then hope that your little circle of friends is online when you need information or want to share something with them.
With Twitter, it’s an instant message as message in a bottle (wow, I’m mixing metaphors today). You put it out there. Some complete stranger you’ve never met before may have the answer to your question, or a comment on something you share, but they’d never known about your question or information if you kept it to IM. You’ve cracked the egg and now everyone can share it.
I’ve had a similar experience – went in early on, thought “what the hell?”, and left. Now I’m in to stay.
On your first point: a couple of times I got stuck in mud because in a conversation I referenced something from a tweet. Then I had to try and explain on the fly what Twitter is. Now I just say that I read it on a blog, and I get away with it.
BTW I forgot to sign my comment…
@lucaf
good points!
I too have experienced the same thing when “pimping” twitter to business friends, to associates, to friends.
to further Cyndy’s thoughts on twitter+im, Twitter in many ways is the new IRC. and passing links to my twitter friends actually gets a response from time to time.
sometimes when people pass back and forth like chat and we only see part of the conversation, i’ve had people follow me or i follow them— out of curiosity. And i can say, w/twitter you got to be engaging with your followers and those you follow.
is it taxing? so far holding my ground. heheh.
twitter for me is about the conversation. i learn so much from the diversity of followers, i’d normally never converse with. it is social networking.
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Thanks for the plug for my guide! It’s true that Twitter is so hard to explain. My guide is really not so much a general purpose guide but geared towards people with something they want to market, whether thats a business, a blog, a community project whatever. But its so hard that convincing people that Twitter is a viable tool when they see people just tweeting about what they had for dinner.
Twitter is like a big party. People discussing things in groups around the house. Anyone can listen and anyone can join in.
Just this week I wrote a post on our blog about Twitter and how you could now follow us on there. Reaction (comments + new followers) was almost entirely split between people who were already on Twitter being positive, and people who were not already on Twitter going WTF. I think there was only one person who signed up for Twitter because of me, and she wasn’t exactly enthralled at first glance (the “follow” button needs to be made much more visible!)
Having just read that set of rules (the Caroline Middlebrook link), I feel very depressed. It looks like years ago when people wrote posts about what you were and weren’t allowed to put on blogs.
I’m off to follow you now, made me smile… ;o)
I run a content creation/social media consultancy in the UK and have to admit I have not mentioned Twitter to a single client for similar reasons.
Twitter will eventually be mainstream, till then those who can, tweet.
The thing is, does it really matter that it doesn’t appeal to the general masses and that they’ll never adopt it? Do I really want AOL users and my grandma to be on it? No.
Thanks for all the comments and for joining in the discussion. One thing that I can definitely say about Twitter is that it gets people talking and that everyone who uses Twitter typically feels very strongly about it – love or hate it.
Cyndy – I like your analysis about IM and how it’s similar (yet different). I agree with you about the concept of it, but it still runs into my issue; I have about 50 friends/colleagues on IM and usually someone is online. All of those people are quick to respond via IM and I can usually get answers to questions quickly. I have had difficulty in the past getting answers to my questions on Twitter. Maybe I’m just asking the wrong questions, but I think that part of it has to do with people *knowing me* and caring enough about my Tweets to pick them out of all the other streams of conversations to answer them. If I had friends that were using Twitter, I think that it would immediately become more useful and helpful (and fun!) Twitter definitely kicks IM’s butt, though, if you have a question that you aren’t sure someone in your IM list knows about or could answer – and you can reach a much larger audience, all with the same question, all at the same time.
Cocoy – “It is social networking.” This is such a true point – the most intense social networking I’ve participated in, I would say.
Caroline – After reading part three of your guide, I went back and read the entire thing. It definitely helped with my Twitter learning curve!
Sue – I agree that the rules for Twittering are tough to swollow – I’ve just decided to start picking the ones that I agree with and tossing out the rest.
Chi-chi – Keep smiling.
Sean – I probably over exaggerated my point about “mainstream” adoption. I’m just looking for some of my more-Internet-savvy friends to join (not my mom)…but even they are still resisting Twitter and don’t understand it. Right now Twitter is in a super-early-adoptor phase.
There is also some really good discussion on this post over here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=161190
It may be the questions you are asking, or even how you are asking them. It’s been a rare week when I haven’t had at least one person respond to something that I said or a question I asked simply by seeing it in the public timeline.
I did find that the more I engaged other people by responding to their Tweets or answering a question, the more others engaged me as well. cocoy said it best; discovering people often happens through watching the conversation taking place.
yh, youre so right …
added this post to http://www.tectrnd.com
cheers
vincent
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I use twitter a lot and I had some issues with it until i started using twitterfox – I found it a lot easier to track conversations and catch replies.
Absolutely LOVED your thoughts on Twitter, Melissa. Based upon that alone, I’m going to start following you…I’m @CGprogram should you care to follow back.
To be perfectly blunt, I don’t give a rat’s ass what the “rules” of Twitter are; I’ll tweet something related to my work, my website or blog, something funny about one of my daughters or a random thought on the weather. If anyone “official” from Twitter, or a random commenter, comes along and explained to me that I give them nothing of interest and that I needed to be more engaged with the “rules” of Twitter, I’d be as concerned about the comment as I am about the daily temperature in Lima, Peru.
As one who has arrived late to the party, Twitter seems like a pretty cool thing; I only follow about 40 or so people and have about 30 following me but again, it’s a fascinating concept. However, that said, I’d survive just fine without it if it went away……..of if the Twitter police told me my tweets weren’t interesting enough.
CGabriel – Thanks for reading and for the follow. I feel like I’m only now coming into my Twitter “groove” – nearly 300 twitter posts in. I am realizing that the cool thing about twitter is that lots of people use it lots of different ways. And that’s a very interesting thing. I also am realizing that I tend to enjoy reading the posts of people who write posts like me, and more and more I am unfollowing people who don’t. And that’s OK, too! But I’m glad that you enjoyed my observations. – Melissa
[…] this person did not specifically chime in on her love or hate for twitter, I still liked her post, Melissa Chang, tells me why she likes Twitter, bumps and […]
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