Twitter evinces some pretty polarised opinions. Most users love it, being able to keep themselves up-to-date with trends in their own micro world, as well as in the real world. They can quickly communicate with others, which leads to rapid information sharing through retweeting. If you see a pall of smoke from your bedroom window, you have a lot more chance of finding out where it is coming from by looking on Twitter than you will have if you look on mainstream news sites.
Others, though, cannot see the point. That is partly generational, but also partly to do with demographics. You might draw an arbitrary age line through people who have grown up with computers and video consoles, and those who have not. But that changes depending on the type of area you work in. Journalists, novelists, comedians, musicians and technologists of all ages take to Twitter to tell the world what they are up to.
Interestingly, research done by the Pew Research Centre in 2014 shows that 19% of all online adults in the US use Twitter, but that usage drops off a cliff in the 50+ age range, whereas for social media sites as whole (i.e. Facebook), that age range is much better represented as a proportion of the whole.
World view
What is perhaps indisputable, though, is that it is possible to get a snapshot of the world by looking at Twitter, even if that world might be a little skewed in terms of age and language (over 50% of Tweets are in English).
That said, I'm not sure that just looking at the front page of Twitter to tell me what is trending is actually going to give me as much insight as I might want. Here's a selection of the trending topics worldwide as I write this:
- Watching into the Storm
- Carlos III
- Amber Alert
- Wild Life
- Jeremy Kyle
There's no mention of Ebola, the conflict raging in Iraq, and other slightly more important topics than Mr Kyle. Does this tell us that Twitter is not very good at sifting its own information? Or that people have more in their mind day-to-day than discussing global politics in 140 characters?
In fact, it is a bit of both.
Hosed with data
If you are a data analyst, and are looking for a stream of data to work with, Twitter is difficult to beat. Twitter provides a stream of its tweets to subscribers that can be tailored for various needs. You can, for example, get tweets that are made by particular people, or you can track particular words, or you can get the "firehose" – every tweet that is ever made by anyone.
Actually, you used to be able to get the firehose, but it has been scaled back for most users to the "sample" stream, a random selection of tweets from the overall whole. But in volume terms, it is much more than the firehose was in, say 2007/8, and is plenty to be able to start to perform trend analysis.
At a basic level, what it means is that for the average business or user, it has never been easier to find out whether a marketing message is having any impact, and also whether your customers love you or hate you.
Try it. Go to http://www.twitter.com, and in the right-hand corner, type something meaningful into the search bar, your name, say, or the company you work for, or a brand that you are associated with.
Straight away, you will see a selection of tweets that relate to that search term (I now know more about people with my surname than I ever expected or wanted to know). These give a quick insight into what the world is saying and thinking. But wait for a few minutes longer. Assuming the search term is not incredibly esoteric, more tweets will start to appear quickly. (Try searching "Coca Cola" to get the immediate idea, which generates new results every five or so seconds).
That is a level of market research that even 10 years ago would have cost thousands, and you can do it for free. And of course, if you are really serious about it, a quick Google search for "Twitter Tracking Tools" will reveal dozens of companies who will help you assess your market impact on Twitter, and will advise you on how to use the medium to boost your business.
