Has Twitter (Finally) Tipped?
Ignore my byline. This is a guest post by my husband Geoffrey "Mr. Lacy" Ellis. If you'd like to write a guest post for sarahlacy.com, email me at sarah at sarahlacy dot com.
Twitter has tipped. This may seem like an obvious statement to those who have been using Twitter for a while. But even though I live in San Francisco and have to hear about startups all day long, I'm not really a Web insider. I'm an artist. And many of the people who I know are just now getting it.
It's a familiar story, only one I'm more excited about this time around. Back in 2005, when I joined MySpace, I felt like I was
late to the game. I had to play catch up with dozens of people and
build my friends up. I made a lot of connections there and found it
useful for promoting my photography and keeping people up to date on my
shows and zine releases. A while later, when Facebook opened up to old
people like me - who didn't have a school network - I joined as soon as
I had the chance. I saw a few friends make the jump from MySpace to
Facebook, but in the early days I only had about 12 friends. I couldn't
find anyone my age (37) and especially not anyone I had gone to high
school or college with. Most everyone else I know told me it was a site for kids they'd never join. (And most of them are on there now.)
I joined Twitter in April 2007 after meeting Evan Williams and his now wife Sara at a conference in Phoenix. I wasn't sure how to use it or what I was joining for, but I decided to give it a try, mostly because I liked Evan. I didn't use it very much until we spent time with Evan and Sara again in November in Paris. I got to see how it could be useful - especially in a foreign country where our phones didn't work very well for calling, but worked fine for direct message and tweets. I became a more regular user, but I wasn't sure it would ever catch on. It was hard to explain to people and most of them had no interest in using it anyway. I began to feel the same way about Twitter as I did about Facebook. If people only understood why it was a useful tool, they would end up loving it. But you had to use it to know. And the concept sounded hopelessly trivial to non-Web friends.
I knew the shift was on from early adopters to medium adopters (is there such a thing?) when companies and political candidates started Twittering. Comcast, Barack Obama, Southwest Airlines, Rick Sanchez on CNN, etc. I was excited every time I started seeing Twitter mentioned in the mainstream media. It was even more interesting to me when people stopped having to explain what Twitter was. It was like a younger sibling who was becoming successful. Flash forward to the past 2 weeks. I have friends joining and following me at an alarming rate. By that I mean 3-4 per week, but these are people I never thought I'd see on Twitter. People I figured had no interest; people I figured never would get it.
Interestingly, my friends have been migrating, not just adopting more daily must-reads. I haven't gotten a legitimate MySpace friend request in more than three months, and my own interest in Facebook is waning as more friends join Twitter. People accuse early adopters of rushing to the next shiny site, but it turns out my friends do it too, only later than everyone in the Web scene.
Others may not be, but I'm convinced that Twitter has finally tipped and is about to explode. For someone like me, who is outside of the Web 2.0 demographic and has "regular" friends outside of Silicon Valley and the web scene, it's an amazing thing to see.
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Sarah, this is all cool, but I wrote about it on Dec 5th, 2008 on Chris Brogan's blog: "The Post-Geekydominant Twitterverse" (http://is.gd/ajwx). -Mark
Posted by: Mark Drapeau | January 26, 2009 at 08:51 PM
Hmm. Try again ~> The Post-Geekdominant Twitterverse: http://is.gd/ajwx
Posted by: Mark Drapeau | January 26, 2009 at 08:52 PM
Oh yes Mr. Lacy... it's tipped. I know that because I've been one of maybe a dozen golf bloggers on Twitter for almost two years. Then this past fall... Mid-October-ish... golf people started coming in at good clip, and for the past couple of weeks, they've been POURING in. The most un-2.0 people on the planet and they're flooding into Twitter... and many are using it quite actively...they get it. Yup...tipped, definitely tipped.
Posted by: patricia | January 26, 2009 at 09:13 PM
I like hearing from the Mr.s behind the strong girls. Which is not at all on topic, but there you go.
Posted by: Meg | January 26, 2009 at 09:38 PM
I'm not so sure it's tipped. It's definitely becoming exponentially more popular but there is still a great deal of people who have never even heard about twitter. It seems the people who are on twitter is still very focused to a few professional niches and that it hasn't truly tapped into other niches or age groups. It will tip very soon though, perhaps when twitter figures out a way to make money and starts to market it.
Dave
Posted by: David Spinks | January 26, 2009 at 10:34 PM
Probably not tipped, as Mr. Spinks has noted, but in the process of tipping. One of the issues is there are still too many camps with their own version of the "rules" for Twitter to yet be welcoming enough for the masses: "Always wait 24 hours to DM a personal welcome." "Set up an auto DM so you instantly thank and follow." "I hate you if you ever DM a welcome." "Don't Twit more than 3 times a day." "Twit all day long." "Follow everyone who follows you." "Only follow those who interest you." "Don't Market!" "Market!". Sheesh.
Once "we" figure it out, the masses will be all over Twitter. Right now, as a working artist and trainer, it's hard to drag my niche in with me, but slowly I am indeed.
However, I love new relationships and have formed several because of Twitter. So, I'm in for the whole game, tipping/tipped or not.
Posted by: Sean Buvala | January 26, 2009 at 11:35 PM
If you have friends following you on Twitter you never thought possible, I must be in a bubble. I have one friend who doesn't own a cellphone, several friends who still believe Friendster is the greatest site and never shifted, and others who never went to Friendster. Not to mention folks on Facebook who wouldn't know a twitter from a chirp.
Posted by: Ari Herzog | January 27, 2009 at 12:36 AM
While we early adopters like to think we have the measure of each new site, we don't always use the sites in the way in which the average person will eventually use it.
In Twitter's case I think more people will jump on board as more celebrities start Tweeting. It won't matter too much if your friends are on Twitter, it will be about getting an insight into Britney's life, feeling you have a connection with Obama, knowing you are someone who could direct a Tweet at Stephen Fry and potentially receive a personal answer back.
Twitter is really about feeling "in the know". Recent news stories have proven that - people on Twitter knew more about the Hudson River plane crash than anyone else. They saw it first. People like that sense of connection and (dare I say) superiority.
Posted by: Lisa Hartwell | January 27, 2009 at 04:08 AM
The fun part about Twitter is that there are no rules, except 140 characters. If "we" figure it out for everyone else, it could end up sucking. I have my own way of using Twitter and so do you. For instance, if I came in knowing I'd have to follow everyone who follows me, I wouldn't sign up. I have figured out I like to keep it manageable so I can stay engaged. Part of the experience is figuring it out how you want to use it.
Posted by: Geoffrey Ellis | January 27, 2009 at 09:31 AM
It is really interesting to be only one degree away from celebrities via Twitter. It has made the world just a bit smaller. Those "untouchable" people are now accessible. You might even become someone that Shaq responds to! It's cool being able to peek into the ramblings of Jon Hodgman or hear about Diablo Cody's movie set antics. But I think it will still be about people you know. After all, there aren't that many celebrities out there.
Posted by: Geoffrey Ellis | January 27, 2009 at 02:55 PM