Twitter FAQ for Sociologists…
What is Twitter anyway?
Twitter is a social networking site where the main activity is sending out and receiving 140 character (max) information bursts (called Tweets or Chirps). People sign-up for membership using an email address and choose a unique username. After disclosing of a small amount of personal information you are given your own Twitter profile.
Every profile is one page, and consists of a photo (if the user chooses to upload one), a 140 character “About Me” blurb, and if you have entered it, where in the world you are. Your profile is also a record of your Tweets, in the order in which they have been entered, with the most recent last.
Where you “friend” people on other social sites like Myspace and Facebook, the social part of Twitter emerges as you “follow” other people’s tweets, and as people follow yours. Your Twitter “home” then, becomes the real-time sending and receiving of tweets between and among you and those that you are following.
If you use Facebook, think of it as the Status Update feature isolated and turned into a social networking site on its own.
What kinds of information are being sent and received over Twitter?
The substance of the information bursts fall in a number of different categories:
- Mundane events (what I’m eating for breakfast or whether I’m going to get a bath or a shower)
- Personal news (where I’m going to have a beer or whether or not my best friend is pregnant)
- Making Plans with Followers (let’s go have a beer together to talk about our friend who is pregnant)
- Interesting Internet Finds (external links to articles, blogs, YouTube videos, pictures)
- Self-promotion (external links to your own blogs, YouTube videos, pictures, website, creative work)
- Citizen journalism (coverage and promotion of the local community events and news)
- Mediated journalism (external links to, interaction with and commentary on mainstream news)
- Commercial (purely service or product driven information with the intention of promotion)
Who uses Twitter?
Twitter is a social networking site predominantly used by individuals who are high-level communicators and organzations/businesses who want to reach those communicators. Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point is a good lens through which to view Twitter users. He talks about the Connectors, the Mavens and the Salesmen as being the three types of individuals which start and spread what he calls “social epidemics.”
Connectors are individuals who know lots of people and who use those connections to their advantage. Connectors are people who have invested in social, cultural and identity capital and who can convert those intangible resources into pretty much whatever they decide to.
Mavens are the senders and receivers of information. They are the people who always have the pulse on the good deals and breaking stories of the day. Mavens are the trendsetters and the people who you turn to to find out about this thing or that. Citizen Journalists are types of Mavens, often scooping the mainstream media in reporting “from the ground”
Salesmen are the persuaders of society. They are the people who dedicate a great deal of their lives to selling people on their ideas.
These three types of people form the Golden Triangle of trends. “Mavens are the databanks. They provide the message. Connectors are social glue: they spread it… Salesmen [have] the skills to persuade us when we are unconvinced.” (p.70, The Tipping Point).
But there is a fourth type of Twitter user, which I will call Leachers. Leachers are passive Twitter users who do not tweet themselves, but who set up profiles simply to follow users and extract information from them for whatever purposes they may have. For the most part Leachers exploit Twitter and the information being provided to them from the Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. They only use half of the application. They take information without giving anything in return.
How Many People Use Twitter?
According to Mashable, In April 2009, it was estimated that 7.4% of adult Internet users had a Twitter account. That’s about 12.1 million people. How many of these are active Twitter accounts with real people behind them is probably considerably less, but this is a problem with measuring any social metrics on social networking sites.
What about Twitter Penetration into Real Life?
Typically, when patterns of technology penetration are reported and analysed, they are done so in terms of number of users, which was answered in the above statistics. However, the type of penetration discussed here has more to do with how this virtual platform influences and penetrates the everyday life of its users.
Because of the simplicity of the platform it makes it extremely friendly for use on any mobile phone with web capability. Whereas Facebook there are multiple pages and multiple possibilities for surfing, the Twitter feed is the only screen you need to use the site. Twitter mobile is fully functional, because it has such a simple function.
One of the concerns with this, of course, is that heavy Twitter users will often exhibit behaviours consistent with work-a-holics, or information addicts. Non-users will often complain that their friends who have embedded Twitter into their daily lives are missing out on the here and now, and they hate having to compete for the attention of users.
Twitter penetration has also surpassed the personal and infiltrated the institutional. Institutions, which have been the traditional gatekeepers and disseminators of public information are jumping in the tree for their own purposes. Politicians, libraries, universities, governments, police, celebrities, the media, corporations – all the institutions who have things to say to people – are chirping their way into the collective consciousness of the Tweeps (or Twits if you prefer) who would find that information useful.
Why has Institutionalized Media Become so Obsessed with Twitter?
Because Twitter is a social networking site which attracts the Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen; the mainstream media has become increasingly interested in hopping on board this social epidemic. It has gotten to the point where many mainstream media outlets are using Twitter as a source for their stories, which perpetuates it’s perceived value by the users because it can create a direct line from them to the mass media. The Trending Topics feature (a keyword top 10 of what people are tweeting about) assists the media in keeping the pulse on what the Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen are talking about (it should be noted that this is also why market research firms are so interested in Twitter).
In this way, the mainstream media co-opts Twitter as a form of unpaid journalism. The Twitter user becomes a Prosumer (from George Ritzer) – the Producer and the Consumer of “news” mediated by the mainstream media.
Why is Twitter Such a Valuable Social Tool?
Many of the social benefits of Twitter can be found in the literature around social networking sites in general. Feelings of connectivity can lead to stronger social cohesion within cultural and geographic communities. Because the majority of content on Twitter is user-generated, the information does not have to pass through the same vetting processes. There are still vetting processes though, but they emerge in the form of social consensus as to what information is valid, or worth repeating (or in this case, retweeting).
Some, like Silicone Valley ex-pat Andrew Keen, are concerned with these processes of user-generated forms of culture, lamenting the death of the expert as a dangerous evolution of western civilization. But this concern only holds water if you fundamentally believe that culture should be guarded and distributed through institutionalized gatekeepers: mainstream media, academics, admen, studied artists and record companies to name a few.
A local example of the social value of Twitter can be seen upon recollection of the Spryfield fires. Those Haligonians who were using Twitter at the time were sending and recieving information about the state of the fires much faster than any local media outlet was. It was the efficient delivery of important information which was personalized and unvetted, therefore it contained an inherent unmeasurable value to it which is often absent in reporting from the anchor desk.
A global example of the social value of Twitter emphasizes democratization, and information which has circumvented the institution. This example is actually playing out as I type this, in the highly contested Iranian election. Where state controlled media is finding it difficult to control the message and the information coming out of the country. Even their attempts to block Internet traffic has failed, as global activists are facilitating external communication by tweeting proxy server addresses for those who might not be able to otherwise connect to the Internet.
Is Twitter for Me?
Well, the only way to find that out is by going on and trying it. Chances are that if you consider yourself to be either a Connector, a Maven or a Salesman, Twitter would definitely be worth checking out. Unless you are a celebrity, or have many friends and connections to people already using Twitter, it takes a while to collect a following, and really understand how it works. Ultimately, people will follow you if you are tweeting things that are relevant to them (another benefit of Twitter is the positive identity/idea reinforcement as more and more people start following you).
It is important to remember that the thing that makes Twitter so valuable and meaningful for people is the interactive aspect of it. The more you use it, and interact with it, the more you understand it’s value.
I think, though, overall with Twitter, we need to rethink the whole media paradigm. The old “Medium is the message” adage becomes flipped to think about “the Message as the Medium”, with the “viewers” flipping to the “users” and where “content” matters more than “form”.
Do you have more sociologically related questions about Twitter? Post them in the comments here or tweet me @statsgirl.
A very insightful article. It asked and has answered some of the many questions I have about Twitter and it’s impact on my family and society as a whole. My use of Twitter is in a state of constant evolution as I determine how I will use it. I am expanding my social media network focusing on a positive brand for me. I am using Twitter and LinkedIn to support my search for employment due to the economic downturn. My efforts are starting to pay dividends.
[...] Charlene Croft provides a sociological perspective on Twitter: Twitter is a social networking site predominantly used by individuals who are high-level communicators and organizations/businesses who want to reach those communicators. Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point is a good lens through which to view Twitter users. He talks about the Connectors, the Mavens and the Salesmen as being the three types of individuals which start and spread what he calls “social epidemics.” [...]
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Applications on Facebook copy Twitter updates and help to communicate across the platforms, similarly to Facebook Connect which equally faciliates the sharing of updates, friending announcements and changes of profiles elsewhere. As sociologists, we know that categorising helps people to make sense of complex phenomena, the grouping of 30 million Twitter users into 4 neat slices, if it were, though, seems to be missing the point that a considerable number of academics are using the site in order to investigate the phenomenon. Motivations seem to be diverse, non-static, and overlapping among those 4 groups, it would be good to see that acknowledged.
Otherwise, it is a bit like splitting the world into experts and amateurs, black and white, also static. Expertise can be acquired in more than one, formal, way: social media is among the channels that create opportunities to learn for amateurs and chances to test experts on their status as knowledge-producing authorities. What I do seriously miss in the current debates is a more differentiated discourse on power, especially in light of the fact that many do not seem to be seriously interacting with others (or willing to rethink interaction) but rather keen on spreading whatever they have to say slashed down into smaller bites with followers as the currency that bestows status.
Interesting points Britta, thank you for contributing. I would generally place researchers in the Leacher category, if their sole purpose of using twitter is to mine social data from it without interacting (which is the usual positioning of the so-called objective social researcher). If the researcher is interacting with the technology, poking it and experimenting with it and using it to disseminate research findings as they observe, then they would fall into any or all of the other categories.
I never meant to imply that people will fall into these categories singularly… I, myself, fall into all four of these categories as I use the platform.
I’m unsure of the critique in your comment, though I am certain it is there… There are four categories being used in this example, it is not being presented as an expert/amateur dichotomy, and formal credentialism was never referenced (until of the mention of academics in your comment)
What do you mean by the statement that many don’t seem to be “seriously interacting” with others? Are you referring to Twitter specifically? or social media generally?
Thanks for your reply. Categories are certainly helpful devices, yet, I wonder, once users fall into all four categories, what’s the degree of usefulness? Wouldn’t it make more sense to categorise motivations rather than users?
Twitter users whose main purpose is to mine data or distribute content/links etc seem to contribute to noise rather than meaningful interaction on social networking sites – my claim is informed by ethnographic research and the idea of immersing oneself in a certain culture in order to gain an understanding of it. danah boyd might be a good example of one of the researchers who has been trying to strike a balance and who keep interacting with ‘followers’ in a more way (c.f. her research of the blogosphere) that was based on participation, production of content and interacting with co-users. It probably takes a much higher level of reflexivity in order to achieve scientifically valid findings, yet, the notion of social media as field that requires trust-building and an approach rooted in equality is much more sustainable than real-world methodologies that are based on the fact that fields can be exited once the data has been collected.
After all, it’s called SOCIAL media for a purpose…
[...] law of the few, or the notion that a few key types of people help to speed social communication. As Charlene Croft puts it: Connectors are individuals who know lots of people and who use those connections to their [...]
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