Age no excuse for business to avoid social media
When I talk with small-business people, many who are skeptical of social media — particularly Baby Boomers — often talk about how social sites are just meant for the young. And some say they think spending a lot of time online is unhealthy and antisocial.
I try to show them that people of all ages are adopters of social media. Facebook alone has had dramatic growth this year at nearly all age levels, none more pronounced than women over 50.
Now there are new numbers available on social media users. The median age of a Facebook user has now risen to 33, seven years older than in May 2008. That’s not far behind LinkedIn, the business networking site whose 50 million-plus users have a median age of 39. The median age of a Twitter user has dropped to 31, which shows that Generation Y, which was not an early adopter, is now turning to the microblogging service. There had been numerous articles earlier in the year that Gen Y thought Twitter was pointless. Apparently, that’s changing.
Facebook getting older? Twitter getting younger? What does this mean? It means the old adage is no longer true that only the young are the early adopters of technology. And new social sites designed to attract the young away from Facebook and Twitter are reportedly not having an impact. The young are willing to use the same social media now used by their parents.
So much for age creating a digital divide in social media. (Yes, MySpace remains decidedly young — a median age of 26 — but its focus has shifted to mostly music and entertainment. And it’s certainly not the dominant influence it once was.)
While we’re debunking myths, let’s burst another bubble. Remember the study which found people were becoming more socially isolated because of technology, especially mobile phones and the Internet? Not so fast, according to a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Pew found that these technologies do not have a harmful social impact upon people.
In fact, Pew found social networking sites provide an outlet for “discussion networks that are more likely to contain people from different backgrounds.” In other words, people have digital contact with a more diverse group of people.
Boomer business owners, isn’t that one of your company goals? Don’t you want to expand your reach to new people, new contacts outside your regular sphere?
Can’t wait for the next business owner to bring up age, or dismiss the merits of social networking. I’ve got some new research to share.
Will Twitter be its own worst enemy?
“Essentially, Twitter left a ball and a stick in a field and lurked on the sidelines as its users invented baseball.”
– From “Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter,” Wired Magazine
That sentence from a new Wired piece by Steven Levy sums up perfectly the history and growth of Twitter. The simple microblogging service has grown from the work of its users. Users created its conventions — @ symbols with names, retweeting and hashtags. Developers created countless third-party applications to boost the functionality of the simple product — many with names playing off the Twitter name. (Tweetie, Twazzup, Twellow, anyone?)
However, Levy’s article also clearly states the challenge Twitter faces as it wrestles with becoming a mature business. He points out that changes suggested by the company have historically drawn fire. For example, Twitter created a Suggested Users List in February, with about 200 recommendations for celebrities/companies/etc. that new users could follow. As Levy correctly writes: “Outrage ensued.”
And behemoths Google and Facebook don’t help Twitter’s business planning by adapting similar real-time functionality into their services.
Small-business owners undoubtedly could look at Twitter’s history and say this is no way to run a business. However, any business owner can recognize the company, despite its early lack of clear direction, has enormous potential if it can keep the “mob” somewhat happy as it evolves.
Will Twitter be its own worst enemy?
We won’t know that for some years to come. In the meantime, Levy’s piece is a great reflection on how Twitter got to where it is today.
In business, think before you tweet
A New York Times article this week had a great headline — Short Outbursts on Twitter? #Big Problem.
The subject? People, especially celebrities, getting into hot water for posting tweets without thinking through the consequences beforehand. (The # symbol in the headline, for non-Twitterers, is a hashtag, which is a means to make a user’s post more searchable.)
Today, a lot of people expressed outrage over President Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize. Twitter’s servers were pounded this morning. Some of the outrage turned into humor, some of it clever, some extremely disrespectful. A lot of tweets from leading conservative bloggers, such as Michelle Malkin, gained a wide audience. Yesterday, before the nearly three-hour Twitter downtime, a large number of people were angry with the rock group U2’s singer Bono because he recorded a video shown at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester. A lot of those critics apparently forgot that Bono had done the same thing for the earlier Labor Party conference.
So, right or left, there are going to be people who get carried away with their political emotions.
Where does business fit into this? Regrettably, many of the people engaged in the snarkiest Obama remarks were business people, many of them using their business name as their Twitter ID. Their companies may have policies on social media, e-mail or Web usage in the workplace. If so, these people certainly violated them.
Did these people stop and think before they tweeted, or were they “Stuck in a Moment” (a U2 song) and had to get something off their chests? Did the New York financial person who I unfollowed because of some very offensive remarks really think it was a wise business move to assume all his followers shared the same political worldview?
Debate is a foundation of our democracy, and social media provides a great opportunity for people to get their voices heard. However, few businesses have ever succeeded by politicizing the company and polarizing their customers.
Business people using social media: This is yet another reminder. Think before you tweet. Think before you put up that party picture on your Facebook profile.
Keep the lines clearly drawn between your private and professional lives. Don’t let your emotions dictate posting things that could hurt you and your business.
What’s the cost of a Twitter outage?
“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got till it’s gone”
– Lyrics by Joni Mitchell from “Big Yellow Taxi” in 1970. (Younger readers, Counting Crows remade Joni’s song in 2002.)
It’d been almost a month since the last major Twitter outage, and those lyrics came to mind this morning when millions of people (and companies) could no longer follow the timelines of those they follow. Twitter users could tweet to their heart’s content, but no one could read what they had to say. Now many users are gamely trying to catch up on 2-3 hours of downtime, checking on what they might have missed.
Depending on how many people you follow, that could be a lot of tweets to cover.
Recent news focused on Twitter being valued at $1 billion. Those valuations, of course, were based upon business analysis, as it should be. Today, there are reports Twitter is negotiating deals with Google and Microsoft to sell them feeds of Tweets into their respective search engines.
But what was the cost of today’s outage to millions worldwide? Consider the businesses who have cut back on customer service staff and let users interact with a live Twitter account. Consider the corporations who use Twitter to promote and discuss their products. What about the numerous small businesses and professionals who use Twitter to promote their services — and themselves? Or the marketers paid to promote businesses through social media?
That’s the business cost. Hard to put a price tag on it. Then there is the social, political and entertainment cost. U2 frontman Bono kicked up a storm on Twitter with a video presented at today’s Conservative Party conference in Manchester, England. Many Brits apparently felt he should not associate with such an event and had rather harsh things to say. Suddenly, that vent was closed and the angry were left without a voice.
On a far more frivolous level, not even the outage could stop Twitter’s current No. 1 Trending Topic — teen sensation Miley Cyrus apparently killed her Twitter account at her boyfriend’s request. Her fans want her back. At this writing, the top topic is #mileycomeback.
There are plenty of people who will laugh and say I need a life when I ask these questions — What did the Twitter outage do to your day? What did it mean for your business?
It meant a lot to Brits, especially in London, the world’s largest market for Twitter users, who suddenly — right or wrong — couldn’t complain about Bono’s video. I’ll bet it also meant a lot right here in Atlanta, the world’s 10th largest Twitter market.
A lot of people don’t understand Twitter, but after today — and other too frequent outages and fail whales on the site — many know they’ve lost something when it’s gone.
Despite moves, Facebook, Twitter can co-exist
OK, social media watchers, what in tarnation is going on here?
Thursday, we had all kinds of news about Facebook. It’s adding @mention functionality to Status Updates, meaning those updates can target a specific user by putting the @ in front of a user name. The update then willl appear on @thatname’s Wall. And they officially rolled out Facebook Lite in the U.S.and India. In both cases, the blogosphere had a field day describing the moves as steps to become more Twitter-like. Barry Wise at Social Media Today likened Facebook’s moves to a “hostile takeover” of Twitter.
Today, Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, e-mailed users about changes in the microblogging site’s Terms of Service. The Twitter blog reports, to no one’s surprise, that “we leave the door open for advertising. We’d like to keep our options open as we said before.”
So, Facebook wants to steal Twitter’s thunder. And Twitter wants to start making money, like Facebook is starting to do. So this means a Facebook-Twitter war, right? Wrong.
Facebook is adapting some of Twitter’s features, recognizing people want more real-time communication in social media. There are reports that Facebook will make hashtags possible, another Twitter feature, so that a post could be searchable. In other words, if a bunch of friends attended, say, a U2 concert, someone could search for all the comments with the hashtag #U2concert.
But, remember, the @mention and hashtag concepts were not created by Twitter. Both practices came from users trying to get the most out of a site with limited usability. Facebook simply recognized users like these practices and will adapt them. Twitter, in turn, will carefully try to make money without alienating users, following in the footsteps of … Facebook.
Facebook and Twitter are competitors, but only in the very narrowest of senses. They really are quite different. (Facebook friends who automate their tweets to Facebook, please note. Marketers who want to use Facebook for business, also please note.)
I’ll spare you all the differences today. Business Week offers this quick summary:
“Facebook is the private party. Twitter is the public square. This line has been drawn and there’s no reasonable change either site can make to step across it.”
Words to remember next time you’re reading dispatches from the social media industry battleground. I expect Facebook and Twitter both to flourish without stepping on each other’s toes.
