Jun 10 2009
If Email Is a Blank Canvas, then Twitter Is a Mirror
One of the things I like most about working in the email space is that as of 2009, being an email user is entirely label-free. When you give someone your email address, it doesn’t drag along a laundry list of negative connotations or misleading assumptions about who you are as a person. An email user therefore is given a tabula rasa—a clean slate—that gradually takes on the character of the contents within the inbox.
Now compare that perception with your initial reaction upon hearing a new acquaintance say, “you can find me on Twitter.”
Of course, with any new technology there is always going to be the knee-jerk reaction that any early-adopter is probably a geek. But let’s disregard that perception for now—as any mobile phone user now knows, giving out your cell phone number today does not send out images of the Zack Morris brick phone the same way it did in say, 1990. Once a technology becomes mature, the geek argument becomes moot. But think about the other stereotypes that come with saying “you can find me on Twitter” to someone you have just met, and then consider the obvious negative implications that someone might draw from it:
- You have enough interesting and/or important things to say in 140 characters or less that this person should be happy to receive all of your updates in real-time…
- By that logic, you consider yourself an interesting and/or important person…
- You are very concerned with how many people are “following” you…
- You are an egotist.
Obviously, this string of stereotypes is an unfair characterization to draw without getting to know someone first. But here’s the problem I see facing the Twitter community: there is some significant truth to these conclusions.
To support this theory, I’d point to an outstanding recent blog post by Bill Heil and Mikolaj Piskorski at the Harvard Business Blog, entitled “New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets.” While I don’t want to summarize their findings too much here, I will call out a particularly damning excerpt that explains the crisis of selfishness that Twitter faces down the road:
Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days… At the same time there is a small contingent of users who are very active. Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production. To put Twitter in perspective, consider an unlikely analogue – Wikipedia. There, the top 15% of the most prolific editors account for 90% of Wikipedia’s edits. In other words, the pattern of contributions on Twitter is more concentrated among the few top users than is the case on Wikipedia, even though Wikipedia is clearly not a communications tool. This implies that Twitter’s resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.
So to recap, celebrities, businesses and media folks have predictably jumped on the Twitter bandwagon because it serves their self-serving interests under the guise of community building (and hey, we have a Twitter account too, so we get the appeal!). But for everyday folks, there needs to be a broader value proposition, otherwise Twitter will be viewed as just another venue for media bombardment and not the revolutionary communications tool that everyone was touting in 2008.
I would also point out that Twitter is not the first social networking site to experience these stereotypical narratives during their early years. In the interest of full disclosure, let’s take a humorous look back at the stereotypes scoreboard from social networks’ past:
Friendster:
- You want to meet new people online through friends…
- You are too embarrassed to admit that you are looking for a date, and therefore use Friendster to meet “friends” who will date you…
- You have become really embarrassed because you didn’t realize that almost everyone you know left Friendster in 2006…
- You moved to the Philippines because it was the only dignified way for your Friendster account to remain viable.
MySpace:
- You want to connect with your favorite bands online…
- Actually, you really just want to be famous for something yourself, even though you don’t have much talent…
- You realize that you can get your own reality tv show based on your number of MySpace friends and therefore don’t need any talent…
- Your forthcoming hip-hop single/reality show cross-promotion will get panned by the critics, but you don’t care because you have 37,243 MySpace friends.
Facebook:
- You want to connect with the people you go to school with…
- You attended an Ivy League institution, and therefore only want to associate with other Ivy Leaguers…
- Even though anyone can join Facebook now, that doesn’t mean they can sit at the “cool kids table” with you…
- You use the Facebook photo tagging tool as a passive-aggressive way to ruin your “frenemies’” reputations.
Email, alas, is very fortunate to avoid these stereotypes nowadays. While I suppose there are those out there who say that email is only for old folks (and I shake my fist at you little whippersnappers!), we are lucky to say that our channel is largely stigma-free. Our email accounts are blank canvases that we choose to color in with communications to friends and colleagues, as well as those trusted businesses that we have explicitly asked to hear from. That being said, email marketing seems like a good place to be right now—it works on a neutral playing ground that thrives under both good and bad economic conditions. So let’s take a pause to savor the moment; now is as good a time as ever to celebrate the neutrality of email!
