USA Today reports some very interesting facts about Twitter usage. According to Yahoo Research, only 20,000 of the 190 million Twitter users in the world (.05 percent) create close to half of the tweets.
In the report, these Twitter ‘elites’ are described as “media, celebrities, organizations and bloggers.”
Siliconrepublic.com explores this research further and brings up the cliquey nature of Twitter (IE: bloggers talk to bloggers, athletes talk to athletes, celebs to celebs, etc). Their determination is that Twitter isn’t as social as other social networks.
Here is my personal experience- I guess I am a Twitter ‘elite’ in the eyes of Yahoo. I share a great deal of content on a regular basis. I’d like to think that I am not an ‘elitist’ by Siliconrepublic’s definition. I try to engage as many people as time permits each day. I hardly ever look at someone’s bio or follower count and focus more on what content they are sharing. I do pay more attention to some people that I have listed on special lists, but it is because I enjoy their content and have become, more or less, friends with them.
There are certainly ‘elites’ out there that won’t give a non-elite the time-of-day. You could retweet them 100 times, wish them a happy birthday and tell them good night every night and they still won’t respond to you. Not sure why you would waste your time with these people, but I see it happen often. Thankfully, from my experience, these people are a minority of Yahoo’s ‘elites.’
The majority of the ‘elites’ that I follow are very engaging and downright nice people. People like Alyssa Milano, Flipbooks, Chris Brogan, the entire Mashable crew- and the lists goes on- are all Twitter celebs in their own right, but certainly don’t act like it. They are down-to-earth and approachable. They respond and retweet regardless of who you are or what you do.
I have created a list of these people that I suggest all of you follow and see for yourselves.
So what has your Twitter experience been like? Is it really as cliquey as Siliconrepublic makes it out to be? Is there a social problem? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
