Twitter Is Not The Messiah. It’s Just a Tool.

I love Twitter. Don’t get it twisted. I find it to be a very useful resource when it comes to discovering interesting gems around the internet. So, I’ll be first in line to say that it has provided me with real-world value, and have fervently defended it against friends of mine who don’t see a use for it.

However, I will say that I think there’s just too many people (read marketers) who have clung to it like it is the second coming. Last week, Morgan Stanley’s 15-year old intern, Matthew Robson, wrote a report that shook up the marketing world. Why? Because in it he said that teens just aren’t into Twitter. First off, it wasn’t a real, full-fledged research report in the traditional sense, so, why people acted as though the apocalypse was upon us is beyond me. Even with that aside, however, why is this news? This kid wasn’t the first to look into the massively overhyped impact of Twitter.

You have Robson saying this, but if you go back not so long ago, The Harvard Business Review did a study that showed that more than half of all Twitter users visit the site less than once a month. And even though nearly half of all Twitter activity comes from the various desktop/mobile applications available, I think it’s safe to say we all send at least one tweet out a month using the site. Furthermore, the study found that the median number of lifetime tweets per user was only one.

Taking another step, Participatory Marketing Network conducted a survey on 200 18-24 year olds and found that only 22% of them use Twitter. And iMedia Connection’s Jason Clark published a piece that did a great job of calling Twitter out. He pointed out the 30% retention rate, which translates to 7 out of 10 users who use it once and stop.

Above and beyond all that, what really upsets me is how some people will defend Twitter to the death, as if it is their child. Why is it so outrageous that not everyone is into Twitter? Is it because it proves that the tremendous amount of hype surrounding it is just that: hype?

Social media platforms will come and go. Yes, Twitter is one of the big ones right now, but who’s to say that it’ll still be around in 5 years. We need to remember that it isn’t the tools that are important, it’s the philosophy behind them. And the underlying theme for all of these sites is social interaction. At the end of the day that’s what it’s all about. Biz Stone and Mark Zuckerberg didn’t start Twitter and Facebook, respectively, for the sake of starting them. They did it to facilitate what we naturally do as human beings: communicate. And just as human communication evolved from carrier pigeons, to morse code, to telephones, to email, and now to Twitter, it will continue to evolve. They’re all just tools ultimately serving the same purpose: connecting people.